


A Slowly Sliding Scale

by alp



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:20:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3118280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alp/pseuds/alp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's July, 1914. Booker and Elizabeth are in Boston, trying to establish an investigation service. History is going off the rails, Elizabeth's power is taking on a life of its own, and the hard truths that they've avoided facing are about to catch up to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So, two things: first, this is going to eventually acknowledge Booker and Elizabeth's canon relationship. Second, I may eventually have to up the rating, depending on how certain scenes play out. So be advised!

**DECEMBER 23rd, 1912, SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC**

Neither of them was at the console when it happened, and so while she knew there was a radius, she couldn't have said how wide it was. She could guess, based on their average rate of speed and the duration of their flight, but that wasn't quite the same as knowing for certain.

Although Songbird obeyed the whistle, he was ever drawn to her. They kept having to repeat the notes, reasserting control. But then, suddenly, he jerked and tumbled back. He flapped his wings, bobbing in midair; his head twitched and his eyes cycled from yellow to red, yellow to red, yellow to red, and he lurched forward and screeched, and his limbs and joints shed sparks. Beak reaching skywards, he lost altitude, spiraled, caught himself. He cocked his head toward the ship in what might have been longing, then reeled, turned, and flew off in the direction of Columbia.

She walked to the railing and watched him go, knuckles turning white.

"I feel…empty."

Booker was silent.

"Shouldn't I be happy? This is what I wanted, isn't it?"

She heard his footfalls, slow and heavy, and then felt the heat of his body, only inches from her own. "A lot's happened to you. It's gonna take time, to…"

"…what? Learn to live with it?"

"Um…yeah." His voice was soft, quiet.

She turned to face him. "How long did it take you?"

He looked at her, and his body shifted, and his eyes darkened. "Still working on it."

\----

**JULY 6th, 1914, BOSTON**

_...oh my God._

She sat on a bench, waiting, the Daily Globe folded across her lap. It was the seventh day in a row she'd bought a copy, after over a year of getting her news for free.

In the early days, she'd been fascinated by newspapers. They were filled with conflicting opinions and contrary viewpoints and, compared to what had been available in Columbia, complete intellectual anarchy. It had been thrilling. She'd spent ungodly sums of coin scooping up every French daily she could find, and Booker had been annoyed, and she'd dared him to stop her, and there was, of course, nothing he could do. But she'd met her match in time and experience. As the months had passed, she'd come to see the wisdom in his way, in picking up information from the shops and bars and streets, in lifting "used" copies of important editions. Why waste money on news when it was so easy to get it through other means? There was no sense in it.

But then, the Austrian prince had been assassinated. In the days since, the price of a paper hadn't seemed so steep.

She skimmed through the previous day's events and marveled at them. Germany had offered to back Austria-Hungary against Russia. The Entente was bristling. The Globe was speculating, as it had been for a week, on the potential for imminent disaster. And all she could think about was Booker's nose for blood. _He saw it. He actually saw it, the damnable man._

"That elan and Alsace-Lorraine talk, and that shit on the border... I got a bad feeling, is all I'm saying. Something's gonna happen, and being as it ain't our fight, I'd just assume not be here when it does." He'd been leaning against the window of their small set of rooms, slipping a cigarette past his lips and offering her the pack. She'd taken one and rolled her eyes.

"It's all just that: talk. They'll never attack Germany."

Smoke curled around his head. "Who says they're gonna be the ones doing the attacking?"

They'd left France during the second week in May and England during the third, his body vibrating with tension, his restlessness robbing her of sleep. It had burned her, agreeing to leave on a hunch. It burned her almost as badly that he was being proven right. She'd liked Paris, even if it hadn't been as romantic as she'd thought it would be, and although it certainly smelled better, Boston couldn't quite capture its charm. A part of her had hoped that they'd eventually go back, but there was no way that would happen, now. She'd been through one war, and that had been enough.

Her gaze shifted from the paper to the street, pulled by the screech and hiss of a stopping streetcar. A quarter hour ago, a man had taken a seat on the opposite end of her bench, tried to talk to her; she'd politely put him off. He caught her attention again, smiled, tipped his hat as he rose.

"Good day, miss!" She caught the faint hint of an accent. It hadn't shown through, when he'd first spoken to her.

She watched as the car disgorged its previous load of passengers, as the man entered the stream of waiting fares, as they all climbed aboard, one by one, patient and orderly. Her mind sang a familiar litany: where was he from? Had he been trying to hide his accent? How much money did he have? His suit wasn't cut from the finest cloth, but it was well-tailored. He was getting on the line to Charlestown; what business did he have there? Had that been ink on his fingers? A clerk, perhaps. Had he come from the state or court house? Had he sat next to her because...

She closed her eyes. _Stop it, Elizabeth._ It was an attempt at distraction, she knew, but...God, working with Booker had warped her. Everyone was either suspicious or pitiable, a series of points, boxes on a checklist - a mark or a victim, a thief or a killer. He'd tried to turn down her help, when he'd first fallen back into investigative work, tried to "protect" her in the way he was always failing to do. Sometimes, she wished she had just let him.

Then again, given what she'd done and been through, there might not have been any help for her, anyway.

He appeared when the streetcar had driven off, on the opposite side of the street, weaving through traffic and the midday crowd. Frowning, shoulders set, body coiled. He wasn't taking it well, the move. She'd seen him eyeing the gaming parlors and wondered how much longer she'd be able to keep him out of them, how much longer she'd be able to keep him from looking for more...brutal work.

"Any luck?" she asked when he reached her. She stood, smoothed her skirts.

He pulled a handful of papers, neatly folded, from his vest pocket. "Got a few that need serving." He sighed. "Jesus, I hate subpoenas. Don't even know where half these streets are."

"Well, they pay, and it's all we're getting right now." She tucked the Globe under her arm and took the summonses from him, glanced over each one, lingered on the third. "I think I know where this is."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Past the garden."

"Lead the way, then." He clicked his tongue. "Starting to think it oughtta be your name on the door."

"Just starting?" She arched an eyebrow at him. He let out a low chuckle, slid his hand over her lower back, squeezed her side and, for just a moment, pulled her against him. Then, they bounced apart, stepping outward, falling back into socially acceptable orbit. Another man might hold out his arm to her, but that wasn't his style, and in any case, they were supposed to be playing the part of partners.

They turned down Beacon Street, and this close to the Hill, it was impossible not to notice the clusters of well-to-do and "important" people. Private automobiles shared space with waiting carriages. Women wearing the height of fashion, boasting feathered hats and Gibson waists, chatted with men in custom suits and shining loafers. A few of them cast disapproving glances in her and Booker's direction.

_Yes, yes, we don't "belong" here. God forbid we sully your day with our presence._

"So," he said as they passed the state house, "what's with the newspaper?"

_Oh God._ She adjusted the paper, clutched it more tightly. "I don't know if you've noticed, Booker, but Europe is on the verge of going up in flames."

"Course it is. Wouldn't be here if it wasn't."

She pressed her fingers to her temple. He was infuriating. "If there was ever a time to make sure we're informed..."

"...it ain't when this is the only work we can get."

"We haven't been here that long. We'll get something soon enough."

"I dunno. Pinkerton and Burns ain't giving me too much hope." They'd had luck, in Paris, offering asset and loss protection to a shop or three; here, every shop they'd called upon already had a sign in its window, and every sign bore the name of either Booker's former employer or William J. Burns. They'd had to contend with Burns' agency in Paris, too, but it hadn't had quite the reach.

Boston Common sprawled out to their left, all manicured lawn and history. "We just have to give it some time. We've got that advertisement out, and..."

The air, already chillier than it should have been, went even colder. She caught a flash of light and smelled something raw and acidic; smoke, harsh, rancid. The tips of her fingers burned. There were sparks on them. There were sparks all over her body.

She turned her head. She had done less with her power, as time had gone on. She had gotten what she'd wanted, and even though it hadn't always been easy, it had been rare that she'd longed for escape the way she'd longed while in Columbia. There was a use for tears. She'd shred the fabric of reality, and gladly, if the situation called for it. But she wasn't constantly wishing, constantly searching, constantly at the ready the way she once had been, and so she had started seeing and feeling only what was already there rather than what she wanted.

This was something different.

It was a tear, but it was... There was a man, on a corner, at the intersection of Beacon and some other street, and he was...everything. All things. He had choices before him, as all people did, and somehow she could see _every single choice_ , and every single consequence, and every single end. There was a woman in his life. He married her, they had three children, and each one of those children made them so proud, and they were happy. But she died young. And then she outlived him. And then one of their children died, stillborn, but then he didn't take that job, and she didn't agree to marry him, but he took it and she still refused, and he gave up and died syphilitic, but he found someone else, and he loved her more than he would have loved the first, and they only had one child but what a woman she became, and...

"...Elizabeth?"

The web shattered, and the sensation of her vision narrowing, her mind closing back around the present, made her lose her footing. Booker grabbed at her, held her upright. She looked up at him and wondered why the light hurt her eyes.

"You okay?"

She sucked in a breath. _What the hell was that?_ "Yes, I..." She placed a palm on his chest and used him to steady herself. "I just saw a tear."

"A tear?" he asked, tone flat, disbelieving.

"It was strange. It was...as if one tear were many, and I was seeing them all at once." She pulled away from him. "I'm fine, though."

He stared at her, his jaw working. She knew what he wanted to say. He'd tried it and failed enough in the time they'd known each other that she also knew he wasn't going to bother. "Ah, um...okay."

They started walking again, and she tried not to worry about the fact that her spine was tingling, and that she didn't want to talk to him.

\----

She'd developed a taste for whisky, despite the preference of the French for other types of alcohol, and tonight, she'd needed it. Booker was a terrible influence.

They'd managed to serve half the subpoenas he'd picked up, and they'd gotten paid for them. It wasn't the fattest wage, but it was enough to carry them through the next few days and have enough left over to spare for a bottle. So, they drank and flirted, the way they always did.

Who might she have been, if it hadn't been for him or Comstock? What might she be doing? She knew that she was smart, but as far as she could tell, intelligence could only take a person so far. It was mitigated by so many other factors, and the fact that she was a woman just happened to be one of them.

The world wasn't very clean. She'd picked up on the wrong things, when she'd first read 'Les Miserables.'

"I'm gonna go to bed. You coming, or what?"

She felt off. Since that moment, when what should have been a simple tear had shattered into a kaleidoscope, everything had felt slightly askew. It was why she had a drink in her hand. It was why she hesitated.

She tipped back the glass. _Stop being ridiculous._ "Sure."

She followed him into the bedroom. His kiss was familiar, comforting. She ran her hands over his shoulders and back, through hair that was growing ever more grey, over muscles that were changing in shape. She still wanted him, with the same fervor that had gripped her a year and a half ago, no matter what changes had taken place, no matter what had passed between them. When he touched her, her body still ached with need.

She'd stripped him of his outer shirts and he was hooking his fingers under the straps of her _soutien gorge_ when the knock came. They froze, stricken. There was a long pause.

"Nothin'," he muttered, bending his head to kiss her neck.

It came again.

"Goddammit."

He put his clothes back on like they were hateful things. He was through the door and out into the main room before she could secure her blouse and step back into her skirt, and she listened, frustrated, as he greeted their late night guest.

A man's voice. "Hello, uh...saw your advertisement, and..."

"...and?"

Her mind was all a fog, so much so that she had trouble doing up her buttons. Drunk and aroused. Perfect time for them to get their first potential client.

"Sorry for calling so late."

"It's fine. Just state your business."

When she entered the main room, the man's eyes slid off of Booker and swept over her, brows drawing close. He was stocky and short for a man, about her height, and he gripped a derby between his hands, worrying the brim.

"Evening, ma'am."

She looked at Booker, then back at him. "As he said, please state your business."

The man's gaze drifted downward. His chest rose, slowly, then fell. "There's someone I need you to follow."

"Yes? Who?"

He closed his eyes. "My wife."

She sighed and covered her face with her palm. _Oh, great._


	2. Chapter 2

**DECEMBER 27th, 1912, PARIS**

The sun began to set and they turned in the direction of their room, drifting down narrow streets, dodging gutters, hewing close to ward off the chill. The day had been pleasant enough, but she couldn't quite shake the numbness in her heart or the dark, hollow feeling in her stomach. She had escaped the nightmare, but its effects lingered. How long would it weigh upon her? Would it stay with her always, souring even her favorite dreams?

As darkness overtook them, they happened upon a public house, and she paused in the glow of its window. Music and laughter, faint. Couples dancing. _Perhaps..._ He must have seen the longing in her expression, because he cleared his throat, took a step, and turned to face her.

"Miss Elizabeth," he said, his tone the mockery of a gentleman's, "would you care to dance?"

She scoffed. "I thought you couldn't dance."

"Ain't say I can't. Said I don't."

She looked from him, to the window, then back again. "You're willing to make an exception?"

"Sure." He shrugged. "Why not? Just don't get used to it."

Something heady and warm spread through her, cutting through the pain. She regarded him, brow knit, eyes narrowed. He seemed to make a lot of exceptions, when it came to her. _You're not nearly so terrible as you think you are, Mr. DeWitt._ "Well, then...yes. Yes, of course."

That night, feeling alive for the first time in six months, her head spinning with wine and endorphins, she murmured his name, gripped his face in her hands, and kissed him.

\----

**JULY 10th, 1914, BOSTON**

She felt...off. Her perception was skewed, her skin was tingling. Opening tears, sensing them, had always felt a bit like wading into an electric current. There was a buzz, a shock, a burst of light. But it had never hurt. It had felt pleasant; it had felt _right._

This didn't feel right at all. It was a pressure, a throbbing. And it had been that way since Monday, since Beacon Street. It made it hard to concentrate. Hard to work.

They wound their way through the streets of the South End, past factories, warehouses, groggy and bleary-eyed workers. Dawn had yet to fully break, and first shift had yet to begin. A little over an hour prior, they'd stood on their client's street, watching and waiting. Now, they trailed his wife at a distance of two blocks, and still they watched and waited. Elizabeth didn't want to be there. She wanted to go home, close her eyes, try to will away the disorientation.

She didn't like this kind of job. She hated jealous lovers, hated their possessiveness, their need for control. She saw in their actions the ghost of Comstock, heard in their words the echo of her cage. Booker could sometimes be that way, himself, but she had the upper hand when it came to their relationship, and she'd figured out long ago how to get him to back off. None of that applied to clients. Had they still been in Paris, where they'd been properly established, she might've pushed to refuse William Roche's business. But they _weren't_ in Paris any longer, so she contented herself with the fact that it wasn't the sort of work that required beating or killing, and quietly hoped that Mrs. Roche wasn't doing anything untoward.

Unfortunately, so far, it didn't look like that was going to be the case.

"Why is she..." Elizabeth could smell the harbor, now, a mix of brine and something vaguely foul. "What reason could she have for coming out here?" The Roches weren't so well off that they didn't both have to work, but they'd had a few breaks and landed the sort of positions that were the envy of most waterfront workers. There were few legitimate reasons for them to come to this part of the neighborhood, and Mr. Roche had caught enough glimpses of the next rung of the social ladder to start caring about...appearances. At the very least, he wasn't going to be happy to find out that this was where his wife was spending her time.

Booker reached into his vest pocket. "Hell if I know." The lid of his lighter clinked against its canister; there was a rush of air, faint, a whiff of butane. "Maybe she likes 'em rough."

"God, you can be so crass." She frowned. "You don't honestly think that she's having an affair, do you?"

"I don't care what she's doing, just that she's doing it," he said, turning to look at her. "I know you don't like this, but don't you go and make it personal."

_Too late._

Margaret Roche kept on, her pace purposeful, her path a mostly straight line. She led them ever further into the heart of the South End's industry, edged them ever closer to the ocean. In spite of herself, Elizabeth found that she was starting to be curious, starting to take an interest in the woman's destination. Was she meeting someone at the pier? Was she dealing in some sort of illicit business? Mr. Roche's suspicions had led him to a distasteful set of assumptions, but perhaps he wasn't wrong to have them, after all.

The change, when it came, was abrupt. The call of gulls rose over the gentle hum of the early morning streets, but the sound was...strange, muffled, not quite what it should have been. The pressure in Elizabeth's head increased. She blinked, and behind her eyelids, the sky opened up, the layers of reality peeling back, back, and through the tear, amid the screech of metal on metal, there came...there came...

"Shit!" The image shattered at the touch of Booker's voice. She shook her head, and suddenly she was lost. _This isn't my city. These aren't my streets._ His cigarette fell through a halo of ash, turning end over end, bouncing off the road. "C'mon, we're gonna lose her."

_Her?_

He grabbed her arm and tugged her forward, until they were moving at just short of a run. _Have we been spotted?_ They should be fighting, shouldn't they? Perhaps he needed something. If he would take cover, then she could start... No, no, that wasn't right. None of it was right. Everything was out of sync, and he didn't even see it, didn't even know. They ducked down an alley; the light changed, and there were two sets of sights and sounds and memories, one overlaying the other. Two threads, dangling. Her fingers twitched. The here and now slid and clicked and reasserted itself.

"Oh, God!" She came to a stop, chest heaving. Lifted her hand to her head. _Shit. Oh God. Oh shit._ Booker skidded ahead a few steps, turned his head, scowled.

"What the hell are you doing?" he snapped. He flung out his arm, gesturing further down the alley. "Ain't even got her in sight now, who the hell knows where she turned, and you wanna stand there and..." He trailed off. He was looking at her, and she wanted to yell back at him, but the words wouldn't come. "Hey...what's wrong?" Softer, now, but still with an edge to it.

Her throat felt tight. When she found her voice, she almost didn't want to tell him, almost didn't think he deserved to know. "I was back, for a moment...two years ago..." She looked up. The sky was a narrow purple square, bracketed by blackened brick walls. "Booker, something's happening to me." She brought her gaze back down to his. His jaw worked; his brow pulsed. She could see the conflict within him, the desire to take care of her butting up against the need to race after Mrs. Roche.

"Same kinda thing as the other day?"

"Yeah."

"Uh...well..." He ran a hand through his hair. "How long's it been since you had the dreams?"

It had been a while, thank God. At least half a year. "Why do you ask?"

"Might be something like that." His eyes drifted down the alley. His body shifted, back and forth, angling away from her, then toward her. His hands curled into fists. It hurt, that he was so torn, even though she understood why. This was their first job, their _only_ job, and if they wasted too much time, they'd lose it. They'd damage their reputation at the outset, make it that much harder to scrape their way up. What would it matter that he'd comforted her, if that was to be the price of it?

_He chose me over a job, once. I wouldn't be here..._ But that had been different, hadn't it? He couldn't give her a life if they couldn't make money. And if they couldn't make money doing something semi-legitimate, then he'd go back to doing all of the things she'd convinced him he didn't need to do. He'd start listening to the voice that told him he was rotten and irredeemable, and in his service to it, he'd close off and shut down.

She sucked in a breath. She was still rattled, and she still felt awful, and she still didn't like the nature of the work, but... "Look, let's just keep going. We can discuss this later." She started walking, and he narrowed his eyes.

"You sure?"

"Yes. You're right, we..." Vertigo. _Deep breaths, Elizabeth._ "...we need to hurry if we're gonna catch up to her."

He hesitated, long enough for it to soothe some of the twisting in her gut. Then, they were running.

\----

If Mrs. Roche hadn't stopped to speak with someone, they probably wouldn't have found her again. And even then, they'd gotten lucky: had they tried a different turn before taking this one, she'd likely have already finished her conversation and moved on.

The sky lightened. The roads grew more narrow. Buildings bearing the name of the Boston Wharf Company gave way to tightly-packed tenements and neighborhood stores. The demeanor of the men and women on the streets and stoops was closed off, suspicious, in a way that those they'd passed earlier hadn't been. The further Margaret Roche went, the further _they_ went, the more Elizabeth got the impression that they were about to come upon something that certain people weren't supposed to see; the more she found herself reminded, inexplicably, of the Vox.

Another wave of vertigo struck her. She stumbled, but kept on, waved off Booker's hand. The air changed, became heavier. Her body shook and sparked like a live wire. There were possible tears, here. _Tons_ of them.

_...why?_

There were posters on the walls, shouting support for James Michael Curley. There were men with flyers and pamphlets tucked under their arms. They rounded a corner and found themselves in a small crowd, congregating in a cloud of cigarette smoke. They watched as Mrs. Roche was welcomed into a tavern, as a stream of people slowly filed in after her. The sense of there being a multitude of tears, of this point sitting at the nexus of a great wheel of possibility, became stronger, more intense.

_Is there something here that isn't supposed to be?_ It occurred to her, quite suddenly, that she didn't truly have any idea how her power worked. Perhaps that was part of why it had started going haywire.

They made their way to the bar's entrance, heads swiveling in their direction, the looks they received a mixture of the curious and the distrustful. Booker's gait and posture stiffened; it was subtle, and wouldn't have been noticed by someone who didn't know him, but Elizabeth could see that he was bothered, that he was...preparing.

"I don't like this," he whispered.

Her stomach flipped. She didn't want to think about opening any of the tears around them, not after what had happened, but if he thought something felt off...

A few paces from the door, they were stopped by a woman with a stack of flyers. Her fingers curled around Elizabeth's arm, her grip firm.

"Haven't seen the two of you before." Her eyes passed over them, appraising. They didn't have anywhere near the best clothing, but what they did have was better than what most people here were wearing. "You here to join, lend your support, or...?" she asked, her tone skeptical.

_Oh, great. So it_ is _that sort of thing._ "We're not sure yet. We're...interested." Elizabeth nodded toward the flyers. "May I?"

The woman paused and pursed her lips before handing one over. "Take a look. We're doing good things, here." She smiled, then, but her eyes flashed with warning. "We're not looking for trouble, mind. At least, not today."

"I understand. Thank you." She turned, walked a few steps away, began to scan the flyer. Booker fell in beside her. The title read, in bold letters, 'Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World.'

Booker drew in a sharp breath. "...you gotta be kidding me."

"What?"

His lips trembled and his eyes went blank. He was remembering something, and whatever it was, it wasn't good. "I think you were right about this job." He glanced back over his shoulder. "She ain't stepping out. She's a damn _Wobbly._ "

"Oh." _Whatever that is._ "What does that mean for us?"

He shuddered. "It means we might as well have gone to New York after all." He looked at her, and his expression made her heart sink. "'Cause seems there ain't no escaping who I used to be."


	3. Chapter 3

**JANUARY 5th, 1913, PARIS**

She woke breathless and shaking. Her eyes darted, back and forth, trying to focus. It was dark, and the bed was hard, and for a moment, she thought it hadn't been a dream, that _escape_ had been the actual dream. She was still in Comstock House, and today was going to be the day, the day they'd drag her to the operating room and put the bolt in her spine and lock her down...

She pushed herself up, moaning, her chest heaving. There was movement, a rustle of sheets, feet padding on the floor. A figure, little more than a shadow, appeared and knelt beside her, and on instinct, she cried out, threw herself to the side, and kicked it.

"Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

She stopped and squinted. "...Booker?"

"Yeah. It's me."

She looked past him, taking in the wall, the curtain, the...window. There had been no windows, where she had been held. The outside world had been judged too great a temptation. She'd been allowed to see it before, and look where it had gotten her. So long as she was undergoing reeducation, every sight needed to be carefully controlled.

But here, there was a city, right beyond her room, and next to her bed was the False Shepherd, clad only in a union suit. Dream and reality finally separated. She shuddered with relief.

"God..." She sat back up. "I'm sorry."

"It happens." He touched her shoulder, then her jaw, slowly turning her face toward his. "You gonna be okay?"

"I don't know." She leaned into him. "At some point, I guess." His arm slid around her back, and her head dropped onto his shoulder. It was strange, the change in their relationship. It had been years since he'd been with anyone, and she'd never been with anyone at all, and she couldn't help but sometimes think about the thing she'd seen him do, so it was...awkward. But it was also lovely. And she wanted him, so very badly, even now, with the residue of her nightmare still beading on her skin.

"Booker."

"What?"

"Stay with me, the rest of the night?"

He hesitated. They were sleeping in separate beds for a reason. She knew exactly what that reason was, and she'd been able to care for a little while, but now she found she no longer could.

"...all right."

He pulled himself up, climbed in beside her. Her fingers twisted in his clothes. And eventually, she forgot about Comstock House, and Columbia altogether.

\----

**JULY 19th, 1914, BOSTON**

It had reached 90, the day before, and today had broken cooler, but it still pulsed with summer heat. It wasn't yet midday, and already the macadam was radiating and men were loosening their collars. Elizabeth tugged at her sleeves and tried to ignore the press of the gun against her hip. She was sweating where it rested, hidden beneath an extra layer, and the feel of its curves and weight sent her stomach twisting. It was a reminder of bitter things. She wouldn't have been carrying it, if Booker hadn't insisted. 

It was unwise, taking this part of the job. She knew it, and he knew it, and they were fools not to have refused it. The thought turned over in the back of her head, pressing against the mass of throbbing, half-realized awareness that now clung to her, always, growing in size and intensity. She could still push it aside, much of time, but there were moments when her mind and vision would split, and she would find herself gazing upon entire worlds, upon an infinity of alternate paths. Some of those paths would reach for her, wrap themselves around her, try to drag her down and through. She'd learned, over the past week, that it was useless to struggle against them. She had to relax into it. Wait for the right moment. Spot the seam, push or pull, open or close.

The trouble was that she couldn't always find the seam.

"Still think you shoulda stayed home." 

He was worried. She understood; she was getting nervous, herself. But she'd lied, when they'd been getting ready, and told him that she felt more in control than she had in days. She couldn't let him do this alone. She needed to look out for him, make sure he didn't backslide.

"There's no need." She smiled, faking it. "Really. I'm fine."

He listed a bit. She'd thought she'd seen him downing a drink before they'd left their rooms; he'd deny it, of course. "Uh, right. Just tell me if it starts getting bad, okay? I don't want..." He trailed off. His hand passed over her upper back, drifted up to the nape of her neck, swept away a few loose strands of hair.

"I will." They were in the South End again, at Independence Square, watching a crowd gather, and as she looked upon it, she wondered what might count as "bad." The edges of the space were already beginning to warp. There were...cracks, and they gave her the impression that no one was supposed to be there, that this wasn't supposed to be happening. It was similar to how she'd felt when they'd been at the tavern.

"Booker, I've got a bad feeling about this."

"So do I. That's why we're armed." He rolled his shoulders. "This whole damn business is turning into a mess." It was. And they'd allowed it to.

They'd wound up talking their way into the IWW meeting, despite Booker's distress and Elizabeth's uneasiness. It wouldn't have been enough just to know that Mrs. Roche had attended; they needed to know the nature of her involvement. She didn't work at the waterfront or in any of the factories, putting her outside the union's traditional sphere. Booker had heard of them sometimes stepping beyond those bounds, and if their preamble was to be taken at face value, then it made sense that they'd welcome any kind of worker. But Margaret's interest was still unusual, and that meant putting in the extra bit of work.

They'd sent a message to William Roche that night, and he'd called on them the following evening. "So what _is_ she doing?"

"Hard to say for sure." She'd been quiet, stuck to the back of the crowd, but she was well known, and there'd been a nod, shared with the speaker... "We think she might be an organizer. Or, at least, trying to be one."

"What? But...why? That doesn't make any sense. She doesn't need a union; we've moved up. We're not like _those_ people anymore." The contempt in his voice had made Elizabeth cringe. 

"Perhaps she agrees enough with their message that she'd like them to have a presence where she works."

Mr. Roche had turned toward her, eyes narrowed, brows pressed together. "You don't...support this, do you?"

Booker had cleared his throat, given Elizabeth a look: _not now._ "Don't matter. You hired us to find out _what_ she was doing, not why. And seems to me we've done that well enough."

"But, I..." He'd sighed. "All right."

That should have been the end of it. They'd finished the job; they should have collected from him and shown him the door. There was no sense in taking it any further, no reason why they should.

No reason, of course, save money.

"What was the meeting about, anyway?"

"They were planning a rally."

"...oh no."

He was an anxious man, William Roche. He didn't trust the world, as few who'd experienced poverty would, and he also didn't trust his ability to stand against it. He was not the sort who could be counted upon in a fight.

"She'll go, even if I tell her not to."

His wife might not have needed protection.

"I want you to watch out for her and step in if it seems there might be trouble."

But he thought that she did, and he didn't think he could provide it himself.

"I'll pay you double your fee, on top of what I'm paying you tonight."

If they'd been smart, they would have said "no." Instead, they'd shared a glance, and tumbled, together, into a terrible set of justifications. They'd have a cushion; they'd have the funds to revamp and expand their advertising efforts. They had to see it through. They had to press their luck. No matter that going to a union rally was a pace too close to the slope of Booker's past; they'd do it, and be done, and then do what they could to avoid any such business in the future.

"Make it triple."

Mr. Roche's eyes had widened. He'd licked his lips, looked down, taken a breath. "All right. Agreed."

_This is how it starts. This is how it all goes to hell._

A couple of nights later, after they'd spent themselves and she was washing the _pessaire preventif,_ she'd tried to get him to talk about it. He'd grunted, rolled over, and pretended to sleep. She didn't know why she'd expected anything different. It was too close to the subjects he'd always avoided, and there was no reason to think he'd suddenly decide to open up, even with the circumstances being what they were.

Now, she stood with him on a footpath, watching Margaret Roche, moving whenever she did. Their charge was near the front of the crowd this time, speaking with the same man who'd led the meeting, the man who'd probably be leading the rally. Mr. Roche had asked for their continued discretion; unless it became necessary, she was not to know that they were there. It bothered Elizabeth. She'd had to admit that he wasn't quite so bad as she'd thought -- he might be jealous and pompous, and he might think it his place to decide which activities were "appropriate" for his wife, but at least he hadn't asked that she be _prevented_ from doing them. It was touching, in a way, that he'd gone the bodyguard route. But he should have told Mrs. Roche what he was doing. He should have let her have a choice.

Passersby were starting to slow, pause, look on. Some were on the street; some had been strolling through other parts of the park. The IWW had staked out a single corner, but the crowd was starting to stretch, and Elizabeth wondered if it might wind up overtaking the entire southern side. She followed the curve of it, turned her head, let her gaze drift toward East Broadway. Latent tears faded in and out of sight. Awareness beat at the inside of her skull. There was something... She stopped, eyebrows climbing. Police. They hadn't been there a few minutes ago. There were only a few of them, and they were just standing, watching, waiting, but their presence made her heart skip.

"Oh, shit." Booker had seen them, too.

"It's fine. Everything's fine," she said. Her revolver grew heavier. "Nothing's going to happen. He'll speak, everyone will disperse, and we'll be done with it."

"That ain't usually how it works."

"I know. I was trying to be reassuring." She gulped. "There'll be more of them, won't there?"

"Yup."

"And they'll try to put a stop to this."

"Yup."

"How long until...?"

"Twenty minutes. Twenty-five, if we're lucky."

"Oh, God."

Booker gritted his teeth and turned toward the speaker. "C'mon, buddy, get it over with."

The air was stagnant. Heavy with humidity, thick with the scent of sweat and exhaust, dancing with the shimmer of heat. Elizabeth felt sick to her stomach. She and Booker shifted as Mrs. Roche finished her conversation and melded back into the crowd. They were at angles, now, positioning themselves so that they could see both her and the cops.

Booker leaned toward Elizabeth's ear. "The second they start moving in, we get her out." She nodded and, on impulse, reached down and squeezed his hand.

A set of arms rose. Someone handed the leader a speaking trumpet. His voice echoed across the square, calling for silence, thanking and welcoming and expressing pleasure at the turnout. The crowd hushed; the sounds of the traffic on East Broadway and M Street grew loud and distinct, and if she strained, Elizabeth could just make out the burbling of the fountain in the center of the park.

"For those of you I haven't met yet, you can call me Egan. I joined the IWW when the strike in Lawrence was in full sway, and while many gave up and gave in, I myself have never looked back."

He started speaking, then, of the unbridgeable gap between the working and employing classes, of the folly of collective bargaining, of the necessity of seizing the means of production, of the primal rights of the poor. Elizabeth's attention wandered. She'd read the Communist Manifesto (much to Booker's irritation; they'd had a less-than-civil debate about it), and although she'd learned that Wobblies didn't necessarily consider themselves Communists, Egan's words sounded familiar enough that she didn't feel the need to listen. Even if she had, she was so nervous, and her power was so active, that she probably still wouldn't have been able to focus. Moments were calling out to her, keeping time with the pace of her heart, and a few more police had arrived...

"...and then, there was Columbia."

Her head snapped back in Egan's direction. _What?_

"Look at what they've done. Look at what they've begun to build. It was at great cost, I won't shy away from that fact, but they've shown us all that what we seek _is_ possible. The creation of a truly free and just society _is_ possible!"

Booker gaped. Elizabeth brought her hand to her face. _Oh, no._ She tried not to think about Columbia, if she could help it. It hurt too much. Gave her nightmares. She glossed over news articles that mentioned it, excused herself from conversations that involved it. There were some things she couldn't help but have heard: that the civil war had ended, that Comstock's followers had all either fled or been killed. But he was talking as if...as if what was left might be something other than a pile of rubble. How could that be?

She considered, and in response, the tears began to unfold.

"The time is _now._ Things are changing. The world is changing. I know you've all been hearing and reading about what's happening in Europe, and let me tell you what I think it means: I think it means the true nature of the state is showing itself, and it is _rotten._ It's greedy and exploitative, just like the men who take your labor from you. And who do you think will bear the brunt when Europe goes to war? Not the men and women driving it in that direction, oh no: men and women like _you,_ who have no choice but to go along."

Cries of agreement rose up from the crowd. Elizabeth's blood pounded in her ears. She couldn't think straight. Bits of Columbia were leaking through. She could see what it might be now, floating behind Egan -- a vision of people tearing down broken buildings and putting up new. She could see what it _had_ been. She could see herself, the things that she might have done sharing space with the things that she had. And she could see walls, possibilities that were closed off to her. Why?

"And if you are in any doubt that the state is an instrument of the capitalists, well, let me tell you something. A lot of you've heard of Singing Joe Hill, right?"

There were cheers.

"You know they put him on trial?"

And boos.

"Well, Big Bill Haywood sent us a telegram, and maybe you've read the news in some paper already, but if you haven't, the verdict is out. And my friends, they are putting him to _death!_ "

Lines, exploding. Every body was a quantum bomb. She was distantly aware that she and Booker were moving, getting closer to Mrs. Roche. That the numbers of police had swelled. That they were starting to move in.

"And for what? For advocating for folks like _you!_ For pointing out the hypocrisy and injustice of the state! For calling the wage system what it is: _slavery!_ They don't want to hear that kind of talk. It scares them. And you know something? I think they _should_ be scared! I think they should look at Columbia and tremble, because pretty soon, we're bringing _that_ to them!"

The crowd, flushed and excited, surged forward as one, and it carried Booker and Elizabeth along. They pushed through men and women who had already died and who had not yet been born, past masses of open wires that sent jolts of electricity running through Elizabeth's veins. She grabbed at Booker, desperate for an anchor. Looked at him. And the slant of his body, the look in his eyes, brought her back, for just an instant. He was perched on the edge of violence. _Everything_ was. And she had come to stop it. She needed to stop it. 

"Booker..."

"It's okay. We're leaving."

She felt like her head was being torn open. "Don't do this..."

"Do what?"

Egan had stopped speaking. The police were telling people to break it up, to leave. There was a shift in the tide, and someone started shouting.

"Elizabeth, I'm just getting the girl."

_...aren't I the girl?_

"Margaret Roche? Mrs. Roche!"

There was a loud crack, somewhere off to the left. A cry of pain. "Stop! Stop, all of you! I am an _officer_..."

Margaret Roche turned. Her pale face was flushed, accentuating the freckles on her nose and cheeks. Locks of brown, curly hair had pulled free from her bun, hung over her forehead, stuck to the sweat. Elizabeth saw her reading about Mother Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, saw Bread and Roses inflame her with passion and inspiration. Saw her rising through the ranks of the IWW. Leaving William. Going to New York City, a few years hence, organizing, agitating. Decrying the Great War and trying to light the spark of revolution.

"Do I know you?"

"No, but we have to get you outta here."

There was a roar of anger, amplified by hundreds of voices, and the crowd became a circle moving outward, pressing up against a line. There were wails and moans, the thump of bodies striking the ground. Tears were forming everywhere, so many of them, so very many, and they were diverging, cycling through entire tapestries of threads. Elizabeth tried to relax. She had to keep some of herself in the present but God, the present was becoming so terrible.

Booker was fingering his holster. _Have to move, have to move, have to move._ She got a hand on Mrs. Roche and shoved her ahead, toward the opposite end of the park, toward East Second Street. 

"Who are you people?"

"We'll explain later."

"No!" She pushed back against Elizabeth and brought them to a stop. Her expression was pained. "Explain _now._ Those are my friends; I'm not gonna leave them like this without a reason."

The fight was spreading. There were people trying to run. And everything was slowing, slowing, slowing. The crack of melee was joined by the pop of gunfire, and every shot echoed, and every recoil was delayed. A man wound back his arm to throw a punch, and he moved as if weighted down, and when the blow connected, his opponent hung in the air, then was lowered to the ground, gently. Elizabeth could smell powder, smoke. Her gun burned into her body. She didn't want to use it, _wasn't_ going to use it. 

"You ain't gonna like this, lady."

"Just tell me."

It was too close, too close. No one here deserved this. The world was dirty. She'd seen so much evidence of that. But a part of her still wanted to believe that it was possible for someone to do something good, and she looked out on the crowd and despaired, and the scene flickered and became the first handful of days she'd been out of the tower, and she didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to handle it. She'd been so concerned about Booker's past, but had completely neglected to consider the impact of her own.

"Your husband hired us to..."

" _What?!_ "

They were being swallowed, now, back into the edges of the fight. Somehow, Elizabeth forced herself to focus, for just a moment, and take Margaret's arm.

"Please, Mrs. Roche. I know how this all must sound, but...just let us take you out of here. You can't help anyone if you're hurt or dead."

Margaret narrowed her eyes, opened her mouth to speak. At that moment, someone bumped into Booker. Elizabeth watched as he reacted, unthinking. Spun around. Hit the man with such force that he was knocked to the ground.

_No! No no no no no..._

She gripped Margaret's upper arms and brought her close. "Run. Get out of here, please!"

Margaret blinked, hesitated. Then, finally, she nodded, and took off in the direction of East Second.

Elizabeth turned, and Booker was reaching for his gun.

_God, NO!_

Everything was unraveling.

_Don't slide back into that, it's been so long since either of us has killed, please, please, please._

Reality shook. Bright, blue-white gashes formed in the air, the tears becoming visible. Some people noticed, and their eyes went wide with shock and fear; others were too caught up in the violence. She could see the lives of each one of them, all of their choices, and it was too much. It confused and frightened her.

But what frightened her even more was that, when she looked at Booker, she couldn't see anything. He was the only person right now whose choices she might want to see, and he was one of the blocks, one of the walls.

"Booker!"

His head swiveled back. He peered at her over his shoulder. His eyes were dead, the way they'd been the last time she'd seen him kill.

"Booker, let's go!"

He started to lower the gun. Her head swam; images of different times, different places, different outcomes blinked in and out of her vision. She strained to hold on, strained to lift her hand, invite him to take it.

And then a man, grimacing with rage, rushed at him, plowed into him, caused him to stagger back. And she knew that she'd lost.

Her hand closed over her own gun. _Maybe I should..._ She removed it from the folds of her skirts, looked down at it. _...save him..._ And damn herself, just a little bit more. Her ledger held far fewer corpses than his. Perhaps that made a difference.

The scene shifted again. All of the tears bowed outward, and energy arced from them, leaping toward her, terminating at her core. Columbia, Columbia, Columbia...

A lighthouse.

A million lighthouses. 

She lifted the revolver, but it was too late. Booker's finger closed over his own trigger.

Water. Children. Men made into monsters.

A body crumpled to the ground.

She was seared by the current running through her. The paths wound themselves around her, pulled her in. And there was no seam. There was _nothing_ , save a churning pool of space and time. Frantic, drowning, thrashing, she reached and tugged on the first thread she could find, and when it gave way, her body spasmed, and she cried out, and she went hurtling back into the present. To Boston. Independence Square. She found herself gasping with her head tilted back. She watched as the cloudless sky opened up, the layers of reality peeling back, back, and amid the screeching of metal on metal, there came...there came...

A cascade of salt water crashed onto her, onto Booker, onto the crowd. A mechanical beast, trapped and convulsing in the final throes of death, plummeted toward the park, its wings jerking in desperate, futile flaps. A red eye, cracking and clouding, focused on Elizabeth. She gasped.

It was Songbird.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize for the delay in completing this chapter. Chapter 5 should be faster in coming!
> 
> Also...the angst train is officially incoming.

**FEBRUARY 17th, 1913, PARIS**

They were stumbling. Her laughter was too loud; his, of course, was the low, barely audible rumble that it always was. She didn't think she'd had too much, but it was more than she'd ever had before, and she was warm and light-headed and pain-free.

She'd dragged him to the Louvre. The Mona Lisa was still missing, but there was plenty else to see, and the buzz around the blank space where it should have been was interesting in its own right. They'd headed to an ex-pat bar afterwards -- Booker's price for going to a museum. It had turned out to be filled with writers and artists and hangers-on.

"Oh, god dammit."

She'd nearly spat out her drink.

They moved through the halls of their building, now, saying a whole lot of nothing and finding it hilarious. He was running his hand down her back and around her waist, and the way he was looking at her was making her ache.

He held open the door when they reached their room, let her in. She turned, opened her mouth to say something that sounded in her head like the height of wit. But then he grabbed her, roughly, and kissed her like he meant to devour her.

"Booker..." she breathed. She'd been taking him to her bed for the past few weeks, but he'd never touched or kissed her quite like _that._ He smirked and stepped away, took off his coat, started undoing his tie and unbuttoning his shirt. _Oh my God._ The ache deepened. Her face flushed, her pulse quickened; she smiled, slow, and titled her head down, watching him with narrowed, eager eyes. When he came at her again, half naked and beautiful and very, very salty, he shoved her up against the wall, pushed his hips hard into hers, ripped at her clothes. She yelped in surprise. He wanted her so badly! But then, she wanted him too, so she clawed at him and matched his desperation.

Later, hours after he'd rendered her insensible, she woke to him writhing and mumbling in his sleep, reliving the awful moments of his past in much the same way that she so often did.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry..."

She touched his arm. He stirred, eyelids fluttering. And then he muttered a word that hadn't passed his lips since Columbia; a word that he'd made clear he didn't want to talk about; a word that, in the here and now, made her stomach roil. 

"Anna."

\----

**JULY 19th, 1914, BOSTON**

_What have I done?_

Wish fulfillment. That was what her tears were supposed to be, what they always had been: her soul reaching out, giving form to her desire. She did not desire this. She would _never_ have desired this, nor any of what she had seen today.

The implications of that worried her.

Songbird fell toward the park, his body convulsing, his shrieks choking and sputtering and then stopping altogether. The light in his eyes flickered, died; the irises flooded with oil. Water dripped from him, sloshed from his beak. Pockets of the crowd, thrown off-balance by the initial surge of water, looked up, stunned. There were shouts, cries of alarm.

"...mother of God!"

It was a trickle, at first, a handful of Wobblies and police here and there, fixing their eyes on the sky and backing away, turning, running, and screaming for their fellows to do the same. And then, they all were moving, dashing toward one street or another in a mad, panicked scramble, leaving behind a mass of bodies. Some of the fallen were still alive, groaning and clutching wounds or clawing at the lawn. Elizabeth wanted to move them. She wanted to at least try to save them. But there wasn't enough time, and that knowledge left her cold.

Songbird crashed down. The ground shook; great gouts of earth shot up in an arcing spray. It struck her, and she retched and coughed and wiped at her face, the dirt mixing with water, caking and streaking. Momentum carried him forward in a wild skid, his head angling downward and his tail whipping back and forth, until he slammed into the fountain, smashing it. He rolled, twisted, came to rest on his side, and was enveloped in a cloud of mist and dust.

He'd carved a gouge through the park, some thirty feet wide. It was strewn with frayed wires, hunks of turf, bits of metal. Elizabeth walked to its edge. There were men and women who'd been crushed by the impact, she knew, but she avoided looking at them. She avoided looking at Booker, who'd wound up on the opposite side of the rut, and who was now making his way toward her.

She'd failed. She hadn't stopped Booker, hadn't stopped _anything;_ she'd slipped and panicked and made it worse. Everything was wrong. The whole day, the whole week, the whole damned month. She'd spent a year and a half living a life that was mostly peaceful and mostly normal, and now here it was, all coming apart.

Damn Europe. Damn William Roche. Damn whatever the hell she was supposed to be.

Booker came up beside her. "Elizabeth." She turned away from him. She didn't want to talk. Not now, not yet. She watched the tears collapse, felt her awareness shrink. Wondered why. He touched her shoulder and said her name again. 

"What?" she finally asked.

"What just happened?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No." She looked at Songbird. Why him? Why, of all creatures and all things, would he be what she reached for in a moment of panic? And the _way_ he'd come... Where had she pulled him from? It wasn't the act of forcing him past his boundary that had killed him; he'd already been beyond hope. Had she done something to him, somehow?

Did it even matter?

"Uh, okay." Booker shifted, rubbed at the ground with his foot. "Where's Mrs. Roche?"

She hesitated. He wasn't going to like her answer. "I told her to get out of here."

"You _what_?"

"What would you have had me do?" She spun to face him. "The fight was growing worse, and instead of leaving with us, you were...getting involved."

His jaw worked. The green of his eyes darkened and his shoulders rolled back. "The job was, we watch her, not send her off. You shoulda stayed with her."

"And left you to it?"

"I woulda been fine."

She shook her head. He didn't understand. She knew that he realized the amount of influence she'd had on him, but he had no idea just how hard she'd worked to give him the chance to be a better kind of man. And his chance was also hers, because before their escape, she'd been giving in to the call of anger and violence, herself. She'd had no choice. She couldn't have left him, job or no.

"Look, why don't you head home?" he said. "I'll deal with the Roches. Long as she's safe, should still be able to get our pay."

"I promise you, she's fine." People started to move back into the park, slowly, cautiously, whispering and pointing at Songbird, edging toward him. The police shouted to one another. A siren sounded in the distance. "I'm not... I don't..." It was suddenly hard to form words. "Aren't you at all concerned with what's happened here?"

"I'm more concerned about you. I asked you to tell me if things started going south, and you didn't."

Oh, God, no. She couldn't do this right now. "By the time I would have said something, it was too late."

"Can't say I much like the sound of that." He peered back over his shoulder, took in East Broadway, swung his gaze around to M. "We gotta get outta here, either way. Place is gonna be overrun. And...Jesus, Elizabeth, _Songbird_? What..."

"I _don't know,_ Booker! Would you leave it be?" Her stomach churned. She was confused, and scared, and ashamed, and so many people had died and she hated it, and she wanted him to shut up and leave her alone. She turned away from him again. "If you would just..."

She stopped, sucked in a breath. Her gaze had fallen back on Songbird. There was...something, a trace, a single line. She could hardly see it, but she could feel it tremble. Feel it beckon to her and beg to be plucked. The thrill of possibility washed over her, overriding her frustration.

_No. Don't even think about it._

It was foolish. What if something went wrong? What if she was dragged under again?

What if she could figure out what had happened?

She started walking toward him. Booker said something and followed after her, but she ignored him. There had to be a reason for this. There had to be a reason why her power had changed and become unstable. What if she could find a piece of the answer right here, right now? What if she could find it at the other end of that thread? At the very least, she had to try, because if she could make it work, then that would mean there was hope for her.

She thought back to how she had felt outside the tavern and at the beginning of the rally, about her inability to see alternate paths for Booker and herself. Things kept happening that weren't supposed to. But how could she even know that? And how could it even be so, when she had seen so many possible lives unfold for so many different people? The reason was there, intuitive, but she couldn't grasp it. She needed something more, something that would push it to the forefront.

Songbird loomed ahead of her, still menacing, still a source of so much fear after all this time. Her nerves buzzed. And as she approached him, his body was overtaken by a surge of electricity, causing him to jerk and spasm in a parody of rigor mortis. His torso shook, his beak dropped open, his head and tail lifted off the ground. Elizabeth jumped and cried out; when he fell back into stillness, she closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart pounded. She gulped and forced herself to walk on.

She gave the remains of the fountain a wide berth, but the pump was still shooting enough water for it almost not to matter. Her heels sank into the ground; mud splattered her stockings, the hem of her skirt. Mist beaded on her cheeks and forehead. She'd only be able to get so close, wet as she was. It would have to do.

She left two yards' worth of distance between them. His eye was pointing toward her, and it was empty and dead, but she half expected it to pop and swivel, for him to squawk and pull himself up and reach for her. A familiar melody sounded in her head. The air thickened in her lungs. _Calm down._ She licked her lips, catching dirt on her tongue. Took a deep breath. Squinted, focused. And after a handful of heartbeats, the line unfolded and danced before her, bright and sure. She could dig her hands into it, there, right there...

Boots squelched in the mud. Booker came to a stop just behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body on her back. There was a pause, and then, "what exactly are you fixing to do?" To his credit, it was the first time he'd spoken in minutes.

"I'm going to see if I can tell where he was before I opened the tear."

"You think that's a good idea, after..."

She glared at him over her shoulder. She was doing this, and damn the consequences. He huffed and backed away.

"Fine, do what you're gonna do."

She turned back, found it again. A spot of light, pulsing, yearning, singing her name. She almost had it, if she could just... There was a wall, like those she had seen before, but it was thin. So thin. And here, it was brittle and flaking, and if she put out her hand, and concentrated on that point, then all she had to do was...

...push.

 _She's bathed in light. No; she's_ made _of it, and there's clarity -- perfect, sweet, and terrible. Tears are an amateur's game. Hers is an absolute power, and the panopticon is her gaze._

_She sees another city, no less incredible and rotten than Columbia, floundering under its own civil war. She sees a space, safe, away from the madness, removed from the center of all things by little more than a set of steps and a corridor. Songbird turns on them, bears down on them, but she knows what to do. What she must do. What she's already done. She splays her fingers and Comstock's ship melts away, and the rubble of her tower is replaced by a pane of glass, thick, reinforced. On the other side is Songbird, surrounded by ocean, drowning and succumbing to the crush of pressure._

_Booker is behind her. She feels something for him that she now knows she shouldn't, and she can see the paths that would have let her act on it, can see herself tasting his lips and resting in his arms. It hurts like hell. When she reaches out to say farewell to Songbird, she glances at the thimble on her finger, and wishes it were there for a different reason._

_It never is. It never will be._

_She'll give him a choice, as the weave allows. He'll choose the way he must, and she'll do, she does, she did the same. She doesn't want to face that yet, to face him, so she remains focused on Songbird. But as she watches him die, something...changes, abrupt and shocking. A piece of her awareness is rent and wrenched away. A door opens, swallows him, tugs at the glass. Booker shifts and mutters a curse._

_Ice forms and hardens at the base of her spine. "No," she whispers. She didn't see this. This isn't supposed to happen!_

The vision collapsed. She stumbled back. Mud seeped up and around her boot; she fell, arms wheeling, and Booker caught her, but his arms gave no comfort. She felt only sorrow, coupled with a profound sense of loss. 

And she had no idea why.

Something inside of her burst. She convulsed, started crying. Booker drew in a breath, sharp, and hoisted her up, pulling her to him. "Easy." The tears fell harder. "The hell did you see?"

She shook her head. She didn't know! When she'd been in it, she'd known everything. She'd known more than she'd ever wanted to. But now, almost all of it was gone! It was a fading dream, and she had nothing to show for it but a handful of images and vague impressions. She felt like she was going to lose Booker, and then lose herself, and that there was no way to stop it. She felt so many awful things, and she couldn't connect them to anything. 

The walls. All of the walls. She'd been protecting herself. She still was. But from what?

_We did something wrong._

No, no, that wasn't it. Something was different, but it wasn't their fault. They hadn't known the choice existed.

_What choice?_

She twisted her head against his shoulder and looked down at her hand. What was that about her finger?

"Let's get you outta here."

_There's no getting out of here. You know where you're going. You've already been there._

She let him move her. There was a crowd again -- onlookers, some whispering, some wringing hats, some openly crying. Cops, starting to move through them, to tell them to clear away. No one argued this time.

No one else would die today. No one else.

 _Except for him._ He's _going to die. And I'm going to be..._

No. He was alive. His body was hot and it was curled around her, and that's how it was going to stay. She shook her head, strained to be present, and noticed that he was taking her to East Second. _The job._ An anchor to reality. She latched onto it. "She went this way."

"What?"

"Mrs. Roche. Perhaps she hasn't completely left; perhaps she's in the crowd." 

Booker sighed. "I don't really care right now."

"We can still do this." She swallowed. She was still crying; she tried to stop it. "If she's here, we can check on her, and then we'll have done exactly what we were meant to do."

He stopped and looked down at her. His face was tight with worry. "You sure?"

"It'll only take a moment."

He pinched the bridge of his nose, and then, after a time, he nodded. "All right."

They pushed their way into the press of bodies. She stole a glance back at Songbird, who was now being approached by a wary group of police, guns raised. The tear at his heart was still there, offering her the chance to take another peek, to try again.

On her pinkie, the thimble burned.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After some reflection, I've realized this chapter really needs to have a note on it. For anyone who might be re-reading this, I'm sorry that it wasn't here initially.
> 
> If this chapter could be summarized in a single word, it would be "painful." It hurt to write (which is probably why it took me so long). This is when the truth catches up to them, and it's a very, very dark moment.
> 
> That said, I want to assure you that I have no intention of leaving Booker and Elizabeth broken. I'm going to be mopping up the mess. But it _is_ definitely a mess.

**APRIL 11th, 1913, PARIS**

Elizabeth's hands were sweaty. She wiped them on her clothes, drying them as best she could, then slipped one of her picks into the lock.

They'd gotten lucky. The door to their suspect's room was off the main street, down an alley. There was still no guarantee they wouldn't be seen; the buildings surrounding them had windows, after all. But their odds were just a little bit better, and Booker was looming over her, shielding her, making it harder to tell just what she was doing.

The mechanism inside the lock gave way with a click. She turned the knob, and the door swung inward, creaking, exposing a dark, cramped room. Booker sidled past her, began to search, rummaging through clutter and giving surprisingly little thought to discretion. She shook her head and moved to the side of the room opposite him.

A tin shop under their commission had been broken into, had a mess of decorative pieces stolen. They'd tracked down a few of the goods, determined where they'd been sold, narrowed down their potential quarries from there. Not everything that had been lifted had been fenced just yet. They might be able to get those pieces back, and if not, then they could at least gather the evidence necessary to make someone answer for it.

She opened drawers and cabinets, peered under the bed. She felt strange. It was irrational, she knew; she'd been breaking into and out of rooms since she'd left the tower, and anyway, this man was very likely a thief. They were on the correct side of justice, if not necessarily the correct side of the law. But something still didn't quite seem right about it. Perhaps she was just tired. The previous night had been a bad one, dream-wise.

"Don't think we're gonna find anything," Booker said, his voice pitched low. "Dammit."

"We'll just move onto the next, if we don't." She sighed. The room was small, and they'd already covered most of it. She opened another cabinet, then began to close it again, resigned to failure. But something caught her eye. "Wait a minute..." Behind a stack of books, covers stained and bindings torn, there was a glint of metal. She lifted the stack, carefully moving it out onto the floor, and smiled. There, pushed to the back, was the tray for a tea service, its surface etched with a delicate, swirling pattern that began in the center and bloomed outwards, terminating at four points along the edges.

"Booker!"

He walked over and knelt down beside her. "Huh." He looked at her, his expression appraising. "You know, I'm glad you started coming along."

Her smile widened. For all her mixed feelings, so was she.

\----

**JULY 20th, 1914, BOSTON**

"I think I should, uh...work alone. Just for now."

They sat in the main room, the slanted, orange light of early evening pouring through the glass in the door. His face, his body, were half lost in shadow. On the desk beside him lay that morning's copy of the Daily Globe. For once, he hadn't objected to her buying it.

The rally and its descent into violence dominated the front page. Thomas Egan, the leader and speaker, had been arrested. The IWW had been declared a "public menace;" the paper wasn't sure it agreed, despite decrying what had happened. But for all of that, the principle headline spoke of a different, related event, and the large, blurry photograph that sat beneath it depicted something else entirely.

"How could they connect this to me? They've no idea where I'm from or even who I am. I'm just another face in the crowd."

"I ain't talking about that." He paused, took a sip of his drink. He'd been drinking more than usual, since the day before. She was starting to grow concerned. "I'm talking about your tears. I just don't think it's safe right now, you coming along."

She glanced at the picture of Songbird. His appearance had helped fuel the negative sentiment of city officials toward the IWW. Egan had spoken of Columbia right before the fighting had broken out, and Columbia had been taken over by social anarchists, and wasn't it possible that the Wobblies had contacted them and asked for help, that this had been their attempt to give it? The "device" was being carted off to Fort Banks until it could be moved to a more appropriate location, and until its origin was determined, this was all little more than speculation. It still would be, even then. But it was worrisome. It was only a matter of time before the connection to Columbia was confirmed.

Perhaps he was right. She was causing them trouble.

"We're partners, Booker."

"Wouldn't be permanent," he said. "Just til things get...til this thing that's happening to you quits."

"And what if it doesn't?" It had gotten worse, since yesterday. Approaching Songbird, attempting to take control, hadn't helped at all. Here, with Booker, infinity was now a constant pressure, twined 'round the buried knowledge of what she'd been shown. And that morning, when she'd gone out, it had been all she could do to remain in the present.

His eyes dropped. He hadn't considered that. Maybe he hadn't wanted to. "I don't know."

"I won't be locked away again, not even for this."

His hand twitched toward his glass, but he pulled it back, reached over and touched the back of her hand instead. "I got no intentions on doing that to you, and you know it." He shook his head. "Ain't see that I'd be able to, anyhow."

It was there, in the tenor of his voice, in the lines around his eyes and the crease in his forehead. He was still afraid of her. He'd just managed to hide it until now. She huffed and pushed herself out of her chair. She needed a drink of her own.

She poured herself three fingers' worth. Stared at it. It had a strong, spicy, slightly sour scent that she'd come to associate with home and with him. It was a numbing agent, an excuse to fall, to join him, wherever he'd been, wherever he was going. But she wouldn't drink as much, even as she put it to the same purpose that he did. No, she'd stay afloat, pull him back if she needed to. Just a few drinks, now, just enough for her to forget both his fear and her own.

They'd been waiting for a knock, and it came as the first sip was sliding down her throat. Booker put down his glass and rose. She took the bottle, more than two thirds empty, and tossed it into the cabinet at the back of the room. She caught a glimpse of their visitor through the glass, a black shape limned by light, and before Booker had even opened the door, she knew. A thrill of something that wasn't quite excitement and wasn't quite anxiety ran through her.

It wasn't William Roche. It was Margaret.

Booker's head bobbed back. He blinked. "Uh...Mrs. Roche." He shifted, leaned forward, peered around her. "Was expecting your husband."

"I know." Her tone was flat. "But seeing as all this business concerns me..."

There was a pause, long. She and Booker regarded one another, the space around them shimmering. Elizabeth gulped and closed her eyes, fighting against the tug of her power. She wanted another sip or two of alcohol. She could suppress it that way, she was sure.

Booker stepped aside and held the door open, and Mrs. Roche moved into the center of the room, looking about, heels thudding against the floorboards. Her clothing was of lesser quality than that worn by her husband; Elizabeth had no doubt that that was by her own personal choice, that Mr. Roche disapproved, and that she didn't care. She held herself well: tough, confident, determined. She'd learned how to hide her nerves. If Elizabeth hadn't spent such a long time honing her ability to read people, she might not even have noticed the woman was nervous at all. 

"I don't like this," Mrs. Roche said. "I don't like people like you. You just take whatever you can get, and you don't care how it affects anyone else."

Booker was edging around her, moving back towards the desk. "Don't pull any punches, do you?"

"You were watching me, _following_ me."

"Yeah, well." He stood with one hand pressed against the desk. Elizabeth was on the opposite side, watching both of them, feeling uneasy, trying not to follow the lines spiraling outward from Margaret Roche's core. "We hadn't been there yesterday, what do you think mighta happened to you?"

"I can take care of myself. Besides, it wasn't like you were there for my benefit."

"Mrs. Roche," Elizabeth cut in. "I know how you must feel, but we..."

"Oh, you do, do you?" Margaret's eyes swept over Booker. "The man in _your_ life isn't trying to lock you away like some rich bastard's trophy."

Shame, hot and thick, blossomed in Elizabeth's belly. The words stung. She hated these kinds of jobs, but never before had any of them made her feel like such a hypocrite, or reminded her so keenly of her own problems. There was something else, too: a sense, a knowing, born of her power and yet removed from it. This was a pivotal moment. This was what would signal the end of the Roches' relationship. Margaret had been thinking about it, sure, but before now, she'd always found some reason to stay. This time, she wouldn't.

 _We've destroyed a marriage. Wonderful._ Even if it might be for the best, it still soured her stomach.

"Look, lady," Booker said, "we just did what we were hired to do. That's all. Nothing personal. You wanna have it out with us over it, fine, but your husband's the one we were working with, and if you ain't here to pay us..."

She laughed. "Right. That outrageous fee you charged him."

"He agreed to it."

"He's an idiot." She sobered. Her eyes were dark, sad. "How can you take advantage of people like this? The people you _came_ from."

"I ain't come from nowhere you know of." He sighed. "You gonna pay, or am I gonna have to visit your husband?"

His words were cloaked in threat. Elizabeth grimaced and dug her nails into the underside of the desk. Her thimble struck the wood with a click. Mrs. Roche stared at Booker, lips drawn into a line, teeth grinding, fingers tightening around fistfuls of skirt. After a moment, she exhaled and shook her head and took a few hurried steps toward him.

"Here." Her entire body vibrated. She shoved her hand into her purse, dug out a handful of banknotes. All but threw them at him. Her gaze fell to the pair of glasses behind him, and she rolled her eyes and smiled a bitter smile. "God, you people. You should be ashamed."

 _I am._ But Booker wasn't, Elizabeth knew. Or, if he was, he was already finding some reason to rationalize it away. She'd rationalized away a lot of the things she'd done, herself, but she was nowhere near as good at it as he was. He licked his thumb and rifled through the bills, counting, then looked back up and inclined his head toward Mrs. Roche.

"Much obliged."

"I'm sure." She looked, briefly, as if she might say more; instead, she turned to go. But when she'd gotten halfway across the room, something stopped her. Her head swiveled back over her shoulder. Her eyes met Elizabeth's, and she knit her brow. "You know, I saw something yesterday, after that...thing fell from the sky."

Gooseflesh erupted along Elizabeth's skin. "Oh?"

"You walked up to it, and it... _changed._ "

She could feel her heart thudding against her ribs, hear the rush of her own blood, swelling in her head, pooling behind her ears. "I don't know what you mean."

"You did something. I'm sure of it," Margaret said. "And there were all those strange things in the air..."

It grew hard to breathe. Elizabeth's extra senses, heightened by the spike of fear, muscled their way back to the forefront and cried out for release. The edges of the room bowed inward. "What could I possibly have to do with any of that?" She didn't like the way her voice sounded, shaky and wan.

Margaret shrugged. "I don't know. I don't even know why I'm saying anything. But I can't be the only who who noticed." Her eyes shifted from Elizabeth to Booker, then back again. "Maybe that'll get you thinking, if nothing else will." She walked to the door and let herself out. It closed hard behind her, rattling in its pocket, its sound a loud, reverberating crack.

The room spun. _Of course. How could I be so stupid?_ Elizabeth reached for her drink and drained it in a pair of gulps. She made her way to the cabinet, poured herself another. But when she brought it to her lips, the liquid changed, going darker, then lighter; it went clear, smelled of astringent. Ice cubes clinked against the glass. The floorboards turned to tile, the light took on a cooler hue, the desk became a counter. Bodies. Voices. Cigarettes. She could use one of those, too. She was out, would have to ask someone, would probably have to let a man hit on her and flirt back, sway her hips, laugh a little, touch his arm, blow him off first chance she got. She hated it here. But she was almost ready. She'd move within the week.

Someone said her name. She looked up, and the bartender leaned toward her. He looked like Robert, at first, and she had a mind to look around for Rosalind. But his hair and eyes changed color, and then his freckles faded, and she gasped.

"You still with me?"

She dropped the glass. It didn't break, but it tilted onto its side, rolled back and forth in a tight arc. A puddle of whisky spread over the desk and seeped into a corner of the Daily Globe. "Booker." This was bad. This was very, very bad. "Booker, I..."

"Shoulda figured." His body was tense. "You were right to bring it up before. Already got someone's made a connection." He let out a breath and ran his hands over his face. "What the hell are we gonna do? Jesus."

She wrapped her arms around herself. Pressure. Incredible pressure. A fraying. She could still hear the people in the bar, could still smell the smoke, could hear other voices and smell other scents from other places. The colors of the room dulled. Time stuttered. The liquor was working its way through her system, relaxing her limbs and numbing her nerves, but there was still... It wasn't stopping it, yet. And that slip had been so complete. And she was afraid, and she felt rotten and guilty. "It wasn't... The paper didn't mention anything..."

"Not _yet._ She's right. If she saw, somebody else did." The spill caught his eye. He put down the money, moved into the bedroom, re-emerged with a towel. His movements were quick, contained, purposeful, belying the amount he'd had to drink. "Probably need to lay low, myself. Damn good thing we just got paid."

The notes were on a corner of the desk, fluttering in a draft. The sight of them made her feel dirty. And they reminded her of something, something that didn't belong among her memories.

_This is it. This is the one. Get it all squared. Just take an hour, won't even know I'm gone, then it'll be done and I'll have enough. I can get her outta this shithole, maybe, get a nice place, some decent clients..._

Her head pounded. Her skin burned. Something was building, had been since the start, but now it seemed ready to burst, and the enormity of it was beyond comprehension.

"Booker..."

"Best to put off making another advertisement, I think. Stretch this some more. Anybody else comes calling til then, it'll have to be me who deals with 'em." The towel slid along the surface of the desk. He left it bunched up beside the paper. "And who knows what she's gonna tell people about us? God, we played this all wrong."

What did it mean? What had they done wrong? _Plenty._ What was the choice?

She leaned against the desk. It was there, and it wasn't. It was the same, and it was different, an artifact from a dark line. The room was many rooms, and she could not make them stop cycling, could not stop herself catching glimpses. 

_Alone, alone, alone. Can't get the screams outta my head. She's all bloody and her skin's cold and her hand's limp and I can't do this alone, God, they cut me loose, what am I gonna do? She was the only good thing. The only goddamned good thing and shit, I need a drink..._

Her legs grew weak. She stumbled, caught herself on the edge of the desk.

_It's not him. You have to remember that. He's dead and gone, and this is but the monster that shares his face. Use him. Destroy him. Make him pay._

"Elizabeth?"

Nausea. She clutched her stomach. What was the choice? What was the damned choice?

_The siphon._

Booker?

"Holy shit."

He was beside her suddenly, wrapping his arm around her waist, taking her jaw in his hand and lifting her head, searching her eyes. "Elizabeth? Elizabeth! Hey, talk to me."

Awareness was coming for her. She could feel it, pulsing in her mind and all along her limbs. The doors were all poised to open.

And she really, really didn't think she wanted them to.

"Let's get you lying down."

He started half-leading, half-hoisting her toward the bedroom. The door glowed with potential, and with the residue of a million alternate histories. She closed her eyes and leaned more heavily against him, but it didn't help; the other realities were still there. It was no use, now. It was too far along.

"Booker."

"Yeah?"

"I'm scared."

His breath hitched. He squeezed her, held her so tightly it pushed the air from her lungs. "It's gonna be okay." And after he'd laid her down, he climbed into bed beside her, and held her still.

\----

Somehow, she slept. And when she slept, she dreamed.

It was nonsense, at first; random firings, running together, blurred and blurring. But, after a time, the images and sensations resolved themselves, and she found herself standing before a hatch. Booker, muscles rippling beneath the flesh of his forearms, turned the wheel, too slow and then too fast. Her stomach shifted with the memory of an old fascination. This was before, when her feelings were a gentle tugging, when part of her was still screaming for caution; when she wanted to be near him but couldn't quite decide what to do about it.

She moved past him into a large, gilded room, a space so fine as to be absurd. Her enemy stood just ahead, on a dais, beside a raised basin, framed by the image of a future her. A future her that he wanted, that he'd use torture to get. The color of the glass, the warmth of her expression, the adoration of the children -- it all clashed magnificently with the madness and cruelty that she knew it represented. She was afraid, she found, but she'd been forced to get used to fear. Her anger and determination pushed her on.

It was strange. She didn't have enough awareness to change anything, or to pull herself out of the dream, but she could still tell, on some level, that it _was_ a dream. It was enough to reflect that she'd never relived this particular moment before. Her nightmares had always revolved around the fighting, or the confrontation with Fitzroy, or the months of torture. Even Comstock's death, shocking and bloody as it had been, had never been revisited upon her. But now, here she was, drifting through the minutes leading up to it.

She was beside him. Talking to him. Asking him the questions that burned within her, staving off his execution in the hope that they might be answered. It was as it had been: his insistence that everything he'd done and built had been for her, that his aims were just, that DeWitt was the real demon. But when he grabbed her, the narrative changed. When she'd lived it, he'd declared that his love for her was more pure than Booker's, that Booker had already proved that she meant nothing to him. But he'd proved the opposite, as far she could tell, so it all just came across as so much rambling.

This time, as Comstock shook her, he shouted, "ask him what happened to your finger!"

Everything sped up. Booker shattered Comstock's skull, and the water of the basin ran red. As red as his nose and fingers, moments later. As red as the banners of the Vox, trailing behind their stolen gunships and zeppelins. As red as the casing over Songbird's eyes, as he came at them for the final time, as he was transported into the depths of the Atlantic. After they'd used him.

After they'd destroyed the siphon.

_The siphon!_

They'd left it. God, they'd left it! They hadn't even thought about it! They'd just wanted out, out, and there'd been no reason...

_"Ask him!"_

She woke with a start. A cascade of thoughts and half-formed realizations tumbled through her mind. It was leaking, or it was being dismantled. That had to be it. But no, no, it was more, so much more. It wouldn't have mattered. She would have pushed through, anyway, and the only thing that could have stopped it was the inhibitor they'd planned to insert on the night that Booker had come for her. Her power wasn't going haywire; it was coming to fruition. It, and she, were becoming what they'd always been meant to be.

He had fallen asleep beside her. His head was thrown back, his mouth hanging open, his breath coming out in a rattle that wasn't quite a snore. She didn't want to know, and yet she was going to, whether she wanted to or not. It was inevitable. And it was already there, buried beneath layer upon layer of denial and self-preservation.

_What did he mean, huh? You tell me, what did he mean about my finger?_

He wasn't the best of men; he was infuriating, and he'd done awful things. But he'd saved her, and for the most part, he'd been good to her. The way he kissed her, the way he touched her, the way he talked to her late at night and in the haze of dawn; the way he tried to take care of her, to make her happy when he could; the way he let her try to change him. If she brought up how she felt about the business with Mrs. Roche, he might argue, but some part of him would listen. And that would only be so because it would be her doing the talking.

She didn't want to know. God, she didn't want to know anything. She needed him. She loved him.

She put her hand on his chest, tears running down her cheeks, and all of the walls around him came down. It was the final catalyst her awareness needed, and it exploded, sending electric fire down her spine and up and out into every nerve. The current of space-time wrapped itself around her legs and torso and dragged her down, down, down, into the nexus of every world that involved her and Booker. There was no stopping it. There was no controlling it. Her mind slipped, and there were no seams.

_It's not so bad, while he's in the midst of it. He's high on adrenalin, and his embarrassment, his loneliness, make him desperate and brutal. The ones he cuts down are easy, because they don't fight back; the ones he burns are easier, because he doesn't have to look at them. At some point, some part of him separates from the rest, and it's like his hands belong to someone else, like his throat and mouth are playing host to another boy's voice._

_The rest of the 7th looks at him differently, after. It's almost like they might respect him. Feels good, to get smiled at and clapped on the back. He gets invited to a fire. Eats, drinks, jokes with the other boys and men._

_But when he lies down to sleep, he sees that the backs of his eyelids are splattered with blood. He sees the tears of the children; he sees the eyes of the women, wide with terror. He hears their cries, echoing through his dreams. In the government school, they told him that the land was dead and that his ancestors could not speak, that to think otherwise was to blaspheme God. But he hears, now, the voices of his people. They quiver under the weight of his betrayal and name him what he is: murderer. Destroyer._

_He comes to hate himself, but he tries not to think about it. Figures he'll get over it. Tough luck, that._

Twitch.

_It's five months later. At least, she thinks it's five months; the days have been collapsing into one another, and she isn't quite sure when it's supposed to be. Europe is tearing itself apart. America is on the verge of declaring war with Columbia. And she doesn't care, because she doesn't care about much of anything._

_She doesn't remember the last time she was fully sober. Booker's been running things. He's keeping to the shadows, just as she is, but he's finding enough work to keep on, and when he's done for the day, he drinks with her, and they have a good time. She wakes up trembling and feeling sick. Can't stand to look at herself in the mirror. But the bottle fixes that, quickly enough._

Twitch.

_They're approaching a lighthouse, one among a countless number. She doesn't need them, or the sea in which they sit; they exist for his benefit. His mind cannot handle the reality of infinity. It can barely handle simple existence, ravaged as it is._

_He doesn't realize yet where he's going. None of them do. Some of them are going to break, unable to reconcile the truth with the things they've felt and done over the past few days. This version isn't going to, but that's only if she's careful. Can't say too much. Let it unfold slowly, gently. Explain it to him like she would a child. Steer him, but still let him choose._

_When he starts to open the door, she finds herself hoping that she's wrong, that somehow, what she's seen isn't right. She knows that's foolish, though. It doesn't matter how much it hurts._

Twitch. Lungs aching. Throat constricting.

_She's huddled in a corner, behind a pair of crates, struggling to catch her breath. Her skirt and stockings are torn. Her fingernails are chipped. Her face, hair, and blouse are streaked with blood and grime. The barrel of the gun nestled against her hip is still warm._

_She's killed a lot of people, today. More than she'd ever thought herself capable of killing. She's barely begun to process the horror of it. Adam and Eve are sparking in her veins, the source of the only power she now knows, and she can feel them starting to rot her sanity. Her cravings are as yet a dull ache, but she knows they're going to get much, much more insistent. She has to finish this before it's too late._

_The radio crackles. She tenses, expecting the voice of the sociopath. When it doesn't come, she slumps against the wall, bites her lip, and pretends it's someone else who's dialed in._

_"Booker?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_He's not really speaking, and he's not really there, but she closes her eyes and imagines him appearing, crouching next to her, the heat of his body cutting through the cold. She wishes he was there to do the shooting. She wishes he was there to hold her._

Twitch.

_The child is crying, and he doesn't know what to do. He's tried feeding her. Holding her. He's read her the backs of his racetrack cards. Sat by the crib and played his guitar. None of it's worked._

_"Jesus Christ, what do you_ want? _" He knows he shouldn't yell. It's not her fault; she's just a baby. But he's tired and drunk and sick of the noise. He can't take this, can't figure out how he's supposed to make it. He's just one person, and he can't find shit for work, and at least part of the trouble is down to him having to look after her._

_She needs her mother, and so does he._

Twitch. A fist, closing around her heart. Squeezing.

_"You wanna get married?"_

_They're walking along the Seine. There's a breeze, and it's blowing in the right direction, and fall is settling in, so it's almost possible to ignore the smell. She stops, stares at him._

_"What?"_

_"You know, married." He gives her a look. "What, you don't want to?"_

_They talked about it once before. He gave her the impression that it wasn't on the table, and considering he was a widower, she understood. The notion that he might have changed his mind makes her pulse race._

_"I..." Did she? Six months back, she'd have said yes without hesitation. Now, she's seen what marriage does to some people, seen how some men treat their wives. Seen how very much it can come to look and feel like a cage. "Let me...think about it."_

Twitch.

_She's kneeling in a river. There's a body beneath her, its features obscured. She feels numb. Wants to lie down beside the corpse and drown herself along with it. There's more that needs doing, however, because the twins miscalculated, and so did she. And given that she's the only one with the power to mop up the mess, she hasn't really got a choice._

Twitch. Suffocating.

_As he hands off his child, whom he loves, he reflects on how easy it is to get him to turn on his own flesh and blood. Hardly have to twist the knife. Shit, don't even have to use the knife at all. Sure, he's got his debt. And sure, he's all but out of options when it comes to both taking care of the kid and holding down regular work. But a decent man would find a way._

_He's not a decent man. Not even close._

It was coming. Her stomach hurt.

_He tears at his clothing, weeps, carves letters into the back of his hand._

No.

_He takes the hand of a preacher. Falls to his knees. Let's himself be pushed down, be cleansed._

_Take it all away. Yes, yes. Let me be reborn. Oh, Lord, show me your grace and let me be reborn._

No!

 _He runs down an alley, and there's an impossible hole in the wall, and the man who came to him is stepping into it, and some bearded monster is holding a little girl,_ his _little girl. The only bright spot in his life. The link to, reminder of his wife._

It couldn't be. It couldn't!

_The hole closes. He claws at the wall, pounds it until his fists have gone bloody, screams until he's lost his voice. Eventually, exhaustion takes him, and he presses his forehead to the brick. Looks down._

_There, on the ground, is all that's left of her: the severed upper segment of her little finger._

_"Anna..."_

Her core flooded with pain. Something snapped and gave way; the onslaught of images stopped, and she resurfaced in their bed, in their bedroom, in one of the many timelines that ended with them in Boston. She could see all of the divergences spinning around her, and she could see and grasp with perfect clarity the entirety of the truth. 

She looked down at her hand, and at Booker, and she screamed.

He shot up, body instantly taut and alert, gaze sweeping over the room, searching for the threat. She scrambled to get away from him and fell out of the bed, taking half the sheets with her. Her body convulsed. Great, wracking sobs ripped through her, choked her, made her muscles burn.

"...the hell?" He slid onto the floor beside her. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay." He wrapped his arms around her. It was too much, too much. She couldn't take the feel of him.

"Get away from me!" She pushed him and flopped backwards, and then scurried, like a wounded animal, to the far wall. Curled in on herself. Clutched her knees to her chest.

Her heart was in tatters. Her mind was on the verge of snapping. It couldn't be, it couldn't be, it couldn't be. Not after all this time. Not after he'd been her lover, her _goddamned lover,_ for a year and a half. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to tear her own skin. She wanted to crawl back and collapse into him and believe him, believe him that it would be okay.

He was kneeling with his legs spread wide, looking at her with such hurt and confusion, and it made the tears fall that much harder. "Elizabeth..." He raised his hands, palms upward, and moved them toward her, imploring. "What..."

She shook her head. "No." It came out as a long, low moan. Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, how could you let us do this?

"Please." He leaned forward. "Just tell me what's wrong."

She rocked on her heels. She couldn't answer. Couldn't face that part of it, not just yet. She had to think. She had to try to make some sort of sense of it all. There were tears everywhere she looked, and of course she now saw that they were not really tears; they were strings, dancing together, part of the fabric of the whole of existence, necessary and ever present and constantly multiplying. There were universes upon universes. Through the lens of a set of higher dimensions, she could see them being formed, budding off of one another. It should have been beautiful. Instead, she hated it, because the ability that allowed her to see it had sprung from a terrible moment, and was now taking from her the man she loved.

Even so, she used it.

He cried out after her. Rose and tried to follow. But before he could, she slammed the door shut behind her. The scent of brine struck her nose. The sun beat down on her forehead, on the back of her neck; the wind tugged at her hair, still somehow mostly in its coif. She heard children laughing, turned her head and saw them splashing in the surf, a woman who might have been their mother looking on. She was back in France, on the shore. A shore that would see its share of death -- not in the war that was coming, but in the one that was to follow it.

She found a place to sit, far from any people, and let her grief consume her. And in between fits of crying, she thought, and considered, and wondered how she was going to cope with what she'd learned, how she was going to tell Booker.

She knew, now, who Anna was. It was his daughter.

And it was _her._


	6. Chapter 6

**JUNE 18th, 1913, PARIS**

It was late. She hadn't bothered to remove the _pessaire_ ; she'd been hot and sated, and her legs had felt heavy, and anyway, he'd slid his arm under her back and rolled her onto his chest, and it would have been rude to get up after that. She narrowed her eyes at the washroom door. The woman had told her not to leave it in for too long, but the sink was _all the way over there._

The sheets, bunched around their knees, caught on her feet when she began to rise. Booker let out a snort in his sleep. Dark lines crossed his chest; the moon, full, and the city lights, always on, shone through the window, drew the panes along his body. She disentangled herself and looked down at him, thought again how she'd like to just _not_ get out of bed. Sighed, shifted, dragged her legs over the edge.

He mumbled something, and she started.

_Did he just...?_

She darted back to his side, on hands and knees, and hovered over him. He'd never said it before. She'd said it, once, and he'd held her, tighter than he ever had. But he hadn't said it back, so she hadn't said it again. Heat pooled in her belly. Her heart thumped, once, twice. She leaned down, until her nose was almost touching his.

"Booker," she whispered. "What did you say?"

His eyes rolled under his eyelids. His legs twitched. She held her breath, and he licked his lips, and he opened his mouth...

...and started snoring.

She let the breath go. _Dammit._ She didn't know why she was still waiting for it. He'd made it known in a hundred different ways that he felt it, and that should have been enough.

She turned to drop off the bed again, but something made her pause. A familiar tingle spread over her skin. There was a tugging, and she followed it, beyond his form to the space between the wall and the opposite side of the bed. A tear -- or, at least, the potential for one. She squinted. It was odd; it shimmered and changed as she looked at it, and what little she could tell about what lay beyond didn't make sense. Her mind slid around it, like it wasn't really there, like it was just a... _hole._

"Huh." She shook her head. She hadn't looked for or used a tear in a couple of months. She was probably just out of practice.

The wood of the floor was cool. It felt good. She walked to the washroom, and the door closed behind her, and she forgot about the tear.

\----

**EVERYWHEN, EVERYWHERE**

He _had_ said it.

The threads unwound and she laughed -- a mad, jarring sound. It did her no good to know, but she'd wanted to. Stupid, stupid. She shouldn't have been doing this, dipping into the well, sifting through memories. It wasn't going to change anything. It wasn't going to make it any easier.

Around her, worlds burst and unfolded, were given life, were terminated. They had long ceased to resemble anything sensible. There was no sea; there were no lighthouses, no doors. There were shifting patterns, weaves and woofs of light, balls of ethereal string; entire universes rolling about like marbles, caught in the barely perceptible current of time. Her sense of self was fragile. She didn't need a body, here, or eyes, or ears, or a mouth. Her laughter was an artifact. Soon, she'd no longer have a voice, and wonder that she'd ever needed one.

They had to have meant something, all of those moments. They were beautiful, each and every time a version of her lived them. She had watched hundreds of variations and seen the ends of each. Some Elizabeths figured it out earlier; some went years longer than she had, and were tipped over the edge only when Booker's resurfacing memories began to break him.

There were so many of her. So many, so many. The Luteces didn't know. They were running on rails, bound by Comstock. Couldn't see all the gods they were making.

_...gods?_

There was only supposed to be one God, and He didn't take too kindly to the mention of others.

Or to murder.

Or to fornication.

Or to what she and Booker were.

_Am I a god?_

Goodness, she'd been there too long. _How long?_ Days? Months? She remembered leaving the beaches of Normandy, walking along the bluffs, watching the tragic future roll over them. She'd seen battlements and German fortifications and engines of war and the desperate attempts to dislodge them, culminating in a final assault on a terrible, overcast day. She'd seen ruins and pock marks, bitter reminders, scarring the land decades later. And she'd seen it all burn in a scourge that had begun across the sea, a scourge that her leaving Columbia should have prevented.

_She didn't see this. This isn't supposed to happen!_

There had been a divergence. Margaret Roche wouldn't be marching against the Great War; she'd be marching against the conflict with Columbia. The first conflict with them, the one that would set the stage. This world would still be drowned in flame. _Songbird._ Elizabeth had messed everything up. She never should have left. She _never_ should have left.

_Go back, go back._

To where? To him?

_My lover. My father. My jailer. My tormentor._

The space that had once contained her chest tightened. Her awareness trembled; strings pulsed and drew together. It would be so easy to suppress, wouldn't it? Go back, apologize for scaring him, say it was one of the dreams, pretend it was only a dream, pull him down, let him help her forget, have a cigarette, a drink, deny, deny, deny. It could happen. It could start out so well.

_I've been sleeping with my father._

Until the drinking didn't stop. _Can't stand to look at herself in the mirror._ Until alcoholism hollowed out her mind and body, until Booker succumbed to his baser impulses because she had given up, so why shouldn't he? Until a knock on the door made good on Mrs. Roche's warning, because they were both too far gone to run.

_What if I didn't drink?_

Too many overlapping worlds. They were all given voice by the robust amplifier of her power, and the scale slowly slid. It's okay, Booker, don't worry about the bleeding. I'm sure it's just from the tears we went through in Columbia. No no, I'm fine, I didn't mean to flinch, I didn't mean to call you that. You said "Anna" again, in your sleep. You called me Anna when you woke up. You called me Anna last night when you finished and do you really want to know why it made me retch?

_The world would still be drowned._ And he'd find out, one way or another. It was just a matter of time.

She definitely wasn't a god. If she was, then she'd have some goddamned options.

A crosshatch of possibilities bowed inward, then drifted back into place. There was a path, for Elizabeths like her, just as there was for every Elizabeth. They all walked the line, choking on their grief, hitching themselves to the wheel of blood. The only alternative was to remain unmoored, and it wasn't long before that option would be chosen for her. She had all the time, she _was_ time, but she was out of it. Too much longer, and she'd lose herself.

_Would that be so bad?_

The space around her crackled and blurred. Worlds streaked away from her, shifting red. Billions of trillions of vibrating tendrils melted together, and the universe was a humming, a buzzing, an electric symphony, and her mind and body were buoys, bobbing, lightly tethered. She reeled them in. They clicked into place.

She found a seam, and opened a tear.

\----

**JULY 20th, 1914, BOSTON**

He was falling. He'd pitched forward, in his rush, and now his hands grabbed at empty space, his fingers brushed the wall, and his knees struck the floor, hard. He cursed. Brought his forearm up, pressed it to the wall. The room filled with the sound of his breathing -- he was taking great, rattling gulps of air.

She watched him, disoriented. The firmness, the tangibility of the world, was dizzying; existing in a single time and place should have been easier than existing in them all, but there was a weight to it that made her long for transience. She moved from foot to foot, trying to gain her bearings. The floorboards creaked. Booker's shoulders tensed. He turned, and when he saw her, a tremor ran through him, and he cursed again.

"What was that about?" His voice was low, but tinged with anger. She winced. "You just scared the shit outta me." His gaze flicked up and down her body. "What the...?" He glanced back over his shoulder, at the spot on the wall that had opened up and swallowed her, then brought his eyes back to hers. "How long were you gone?"

She didn't know. It could have been millennia. "A while."

"You look like hell."

She looked down. Her skirts were torn and coated with dirt. She brought her hand to her cheek, and found dirt there, too. How long had she been in France, before she'd grown weary and decided to find the center? Everything was hazy. Her limbs felt heavy and awkward. Her mind felt sluggish and small. "Yeah. I guess I must."

He stared at her. Time moved at a painful pace. "Jesus." His expression softened. He pressed his back to the wall and shifted, pushing one leg out in front of him, drawing up the other, and laid his arm across his bent knee. "What's going on, Elizabeth?"

Her mouth had gone dry. All the water in her seemed to be climbing up her throat and racing to her eyes. _My father. My jailer. My tormentor._ "I'm, um." It was hard. It was so hard, just to be standing there and looking at him.

He huffed and tilted his head back. "I don't pretend to understand all that goes on with your tears. I still don't know how they work, and I don't much care to," he said. "But enough's enough. You gotta talk to me. Things're getting worse, and you go and run off like that, after I..." He closed his eyes. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help you."

"I don't think it's something you could help with, Booker. You couldn't stop what's been happening to me."

"If you wanted, I'd find a way."

Time slid forward and back, and she heard the echo of a moment that another her had lived and was living. She saw the face of the man who had come for her, not for the sake of the job but because it was _her_ , twisted in confusion and pain, wild and desperate, and when she sent him back, she felt the final glimmer of hope wink out of her older self. She blinked, and tears clung to her eyelashes.

"So what _has_ been happening to you?" he asked. "Sounds like maybe you got it figured out."

She looked down. She noticed, for the first time, that her hair had come free and was hanging in waves and tangles over one shoulder. There was a twisting in her gut. She only left it down when they... She tried not to think about his hand on the back of her head, grasping strands, pulling her face toward his; tugging, gently, tilting her jaw away from her neck.

"I..." How could she explain it? "I can see them all, now. Every door. Every possible world. Do you remember the siphon?"

"Yeah."

"Did you ever consider what would happen if..." The edges of two of the lines containing Booker began to intersect. She had to tread carefully. There'd come a point where she couldn't help but start collapsing positions, but it was better to hold back and do it slowly. "I've been becoming what I would have been if there had never been a siphon."

He moved his tongue, tenting his cheek. "So, what? Now you _are_ that?"

She nodded.

"'S that...good?"

"Well, it means that I won't lose control now." It also meant that they were over. _I've been sleeping with my father._ And oh, God help her, she didn't want to stop. She took a step, sat on the edge of the bed.

_His mouth is fastened to the back of her neck. His hand is splayed across her stomach. She's arching back into him, knuckles going white around fistfuls of linen, and the angle and tempo are so good that she thinks she might cry._

She gritted her teeth. "There's something else." Slow, slow. Like the others had done, so he could make the choice himself. She looked at the hand that hung off his knee. _Don't say anything. All you have to do is not say anything!_ "You never told me -- what do the letters stand for?"

He blinked dumbly. "What?"

"On the back of your hand."

He shook his head, lifted his hand. The initials were split by a long, narrow scar. "I know what you meant. What I don't get is why you're asking."

"I'd like to know. Please. It's important." Another knot of strings shifted and met those that had already begun to overlap. Booker's breathing changed. He began to fidget.

"It's...they're..." He wrinkled his nose, pressed his hand to his forehead. Threads danced around him. If Elizabeth squinted, she could see where some had been severed, or twisted back onto themselves -- the legacy of the Luteces' meddling, and of their own ill-advised jumps through tears. "I can't remember." Spots of red blossomed beneath his nose. He gasped, dragged a finger across his upper lip.

"Can you try?"

"I did. I..." He narrowed his eyes. "What's it matter? We were talking about you."

_We still are._ Something thickened in her throat. She swallowed, and missed the feeling of separating from her self. "It's something I saw."

"Why don't you tell _me_ , then?"

"It doesn't work that way." She'd seen how it went, when he learned the truth too quickly, when he wasn't allowed to ease into it. She'd seen his madness. There were other versions of her who didn't mind, who were beyond the capacity for mercy, who were so hurt and angry that they cared only that it ended. She didn't want it to end at all.

_My jailer. My tormentor._ He didn't know. He hadn't done it. This wasn't the man who became; this was the man who chose not to. Shouldn't that have meant something? 

A knot unfurled. A shudder ran through him. Worlds began to wink out. "I don't wanna talk about this."

"Please..."

"I don't wanna talk about it!"

"We have to," she said, voice cracking. They didn't, they didn't. A new string emerged from one of the old. She plucked it, and it flung itself toward her and burrowed into her chest.

_She's on her knees, joints aching from long disuse. She wipes the blood from his nose with her sleeve, and he grabs her arm, sliding his thumb along her wrist. Her body convulses._

_"Why?"_

_"I don't know." She can hardly get the words out. "I'm sorry," she whispers. He pulls her into his lap. Cradles her against his chest. She shuts her eyes and begins the hard, heavy work of deadening her senses, closing herself off to the universe._

_Half a year later, in a different city, she wakes to cool skin, parted lips, unblinking eyes, covered in film. Trails of dark red wind from his ears and nose to a wide pool on his pillow. It's still wet._

_She starts screaming. She doesn't stop._

"We don't have to do anything."

She folded her arms across her chest, bit her lip, lifted her eyes to the ceiling. There was a crack in the spackle, leading off to the outer wall and terminating in a yellow-brown splotch. Water dripped from it, and also it did not, and also it was not there at all. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that you can't remember?"

"Not particularly." He tapped his knee with his fingers. His foot knocked against the floor.

"Really? It means you went through..."

"It means I went through a tear, yeah, ye..." He trailed off. His eyes went wide, and his posture stiffened, causing his shoulders to square and press back against the wall. He looked at her, and for a moment, his corner of the universe shrank. A sick thrill ran through her. This was it. He was going to get it. He was going to start to want to know, and the pieces were going to start to come together, and she was going to get that much closer to losing him. But then, he shook himself, ran his hands over his face, and stood up. The possibilities around him multiplied once again.

Wide, purposeful strides carried him toward the other room. "I gotta clear my head."

"Booker." She followed him out of the bedroom. He grabbed a few bills off the pile on the corner of the desk, stuffed them into his vest pocket. "Booker, wait."

"Dammit, Elizabeth, I don't wanna talk!"

_Let him go. It'll be easier._ The number of potential rotten futures swelled. Seventy years hence, in the midst of a war that was meant to have only two sides, and to have never exploded into open conflict, a bomb detonated. _I can't._ She raced ahead of him, put herself between him and the door. "I need to talk to you but you don't need to talk to me? Huh? Is that how this goes?"

"You want me to talk about something ain't got shit to do with the here and now."

"It's got _everything_ to do with the here and now."

"I'll bet." He stepped around her. "I'm taking a walk."

"But..." If she let him go, he'd be even more closed off when he came home. It would be even harder to go the delicate route. Perhaps she should have done like some of the others and shown him instead. But would he have let her bring him there, after so much time spent among the mundane? "But...you can't..."

He opened the door. She had to stop him. She couldn't do this outside, in the street, after already deforming the shape of history and drawing undue attention to themselves. It had to be done here, and it had to be done now. In desperation, intent on shocking him to stillness, she grasped onto a pair of words. It was a mistake to say them. She knew it before they'd even left her mouth. But they came out, anyway. 

"Anna DeWitt."

His back straightened. His hand, coiled around the doorknob, began to shake. "What did you say?"

"That's what A.D. stands for: Anna DeWitt."

Everything around him began to collapse, fast enough to rip threads in two. Worlds erupted, slammed into each other. Strings sparked and sizzled and whipped back and forth, propelled by their own inertia. Booker staggered backwards. He turned to look at her. "There wasn't a..." His knees gave out. "No."

The tears fell freely. "Yes."

"What did I do?" There was blood, so much blood. It was dripping onto the floor. "Oh God, what did I do?" Too fast. Much too fast. "Anna..." His gaze swept over her frame. Paused at her right hand. Took in her thimble. Her heart stopped.

_Here it comes._

Three lines, stripped from infinity. Three lines remaining, pulled taut against a backdrop of frayed ends and dying lights. His face contorted. "It can't...there wasn't..."

Wait.

He swayed. His eyes rolled back into his head.

_Three_ lines?

She dived forward, scrambled to his side, but there was no catching him. She wouldn't have been strong enough, anyway. There was a thump as his head struck the floor, another as it bounced and struck again. His torso rolled forward; he slumped onto his chest, legs curled underneath, shoulder pointed toward the desk. Reality shuddered, and the line representing the correct choice lengthened, just a bit.

It would be over when he woke. Everything would be over.

She nestled his head in her lap, bent over him, and wept.


	7. Chapter 7

**FEBRUARY 1st, 1915, BOSTON**

She sat at the desk, in her coat, waiting. A patch of light narrowed, widened, moved slowly across the floor. The door no longer displayed his name. She'd kept it at first, but it drew too much attention, and seeing it every day had started to hurt.

They were coming. She didn't know exactly when, but it would be some time that night. She'd seen it. Done nothing to stop it.

Months ago, after Songbird had been dismantled, Columbia had denied responsibility for the "attack," and the IWW had denied anything but an ideological connection to Columbia. It didn't matter that they were telling the truth; the US had all the evidence it needed to brand them aggressors, and the question of whether to get involved in the European conflict had been settled, just like that. There were many lines that still had them entering, as they were meant to, and on time at that, but she feared the ones in which they didn't. The conflagration started sooner in those worlds.

It was doubtful she'd be able to influence it. She'd given up her one surefire opportunity, in service to devotion. Now, all she could do was try to inspire the budding of a new thread. She took a sip of coffee and wished it was the liquor she'd quit drinking months ago.

A shadow fell. The door rattled. She clicked her tongue; she hadn't expected them to knock. The room took on a surreal quality, and she moved on weighted legs through thick, heavy air. There were three of them outside, and when she opened the door, their eyebrows climbed, like they couldn't believe she was their suspect.

"Elizabeth DeWitt?"

She winced. People asked questions, even in these enlightened times. It hadn't mattered that they weren't really married, so long as people assumed they were. The fact that she now knew it was her real last name made hearing it all the more painful. "Yes?"

The one who'd spoken sighed. A knot of wires shook at his center. There was something wrong with his heart. There'd be a treatment for it in a few decades, but he wouldn't be around to get it. Every single one of his potential futures, every single one of his choices, hurtled him toward the same rotten fate: a massive, fatal heart attack. At least he'd put away enough money that his wife and children would be provided for. "Ma'am, we're gonna need you to come with us."

She didn't know where Booker had decided to go. It had been hard, not to look after he'd left, but she hadn't. She hoped he was safe. She hoped that, one day, he would find a way to forgive himself.

"Okay." She stepped out into the street and locked the door, knowing it was for the last time. "Let's go."

\----

**JULY 21st, 1914, BOSTON**

He was sleeping. She could see the movements of his eyes, tugging at and bunching the skin around his eyelids. There had been times, since his collapse the day before, when his limbs had jerked and he'd moaned her current name, or her former one, and sometimes, when it had been "Anna" on his lips, his tone had...changed. It was subtle, but she knew in those moments that he wasn't calling for her; he was calling for her mother.

He'd been crazy about the woman. She didn't know whether to feel jealous or comforted.

Hours had passed in a slow agony the night before. It would have been easy for her to use a tear to skip ahead, but she was terrified of throwing something off. So, she'd stayed on the floor beside him, watching, waiting. And finally, when exhaustion had worked its way deep into her limbs and made her head start lolling, he'd come to. He'd looked at her like he couldn't understand, like the lines and curves of her face had punctured his awareness and forced it to slide away. They'd stumbled toward the bed, his weight pressing her down. Her muscles still ached from the effort of keeping him upright. After she'd gotten him settled, she'd tried to scrub the blood stains from the floor. It hadn't worked.

Moments ticked and slipped away.

She paced. Dared to dart back into the other room, grab something to eat, pour herself a drink. Moved to the sink and wash basin when the stickiness of the air began to get to her, when her clothes began to cling. Her hands shook as she washed her face and soaped her hair. She thought of the plans they'd had, of the triple-decker apartments in Dorchester, of the hopes that had been dashed by the ubiquity of Pinkerton and Burns. If they'd had more time, they still might have made it. In some of the worlds where it took longer for her to reach her full potential, they actually wound up doing well. In one, they even had a townhouse, and were living in it when the influenza epidemic hit. They spent long nights shut away, trying not to talk or think about the reason they'd put their business on hiatus and had lost so many friends (they'd had _friends!_ ). For all that it was horrible, she wouldn't have minded living through it. It would have been worth it, just to keep him a little longer.

A sound came from his direction -- a long, low moan. She looked back. His head was turned to one side; a fresh stream of blood trickled from his nose, staining the already mottled pillowcase. She grabbed a cloth and stepped over to him. 

There'd been a couple of weeks, back in Paris, when he'd taken ill. They'd been running several jobs at the time, so he'd tried to ignore it, working right on through, brushing her off when she'd insisted he rest. Eventually, his temperature had climbed high enough to drag him down, and she'd nursed him and wondered why she wasn't getting sick, herself. She'd never told him how her concern had crossed over into stomach-sinking worry, how she'd come close to calling a doctor, despite how much it would have cost and how annoyed he would have been. She wiped his nose and upper lip and considered those moments. He'd died back then, sometimes. 

She laid the back of her wrist against his forehead. His skin was cool and clammy. The color had faded from his lips and cheeks. She fretted over the amount of blood he'd lost, even though she knew she shouldn't. It was silly, irrational. There was only one way to stop everything, a single antidote for Comstock's poison, and, well, dead was dead. She could open a tear right now, drop him into the pivotal moment, let him drown, asleep and unaware, in the demon's crib. But the thought of it made her shake with panic. She was weak, as weak as he was, in so many of the same ways. And, more than that, she was selfish.

Well, so be it. After everything that had happened, she deserved to be selfish.

She lingered at his side. There was still soap in her hair, and where it dripped onto the bed and his clothes, tiny bubbles popped and spread outward, forming a light film. He began, slowly, to pass into wakefulness. His movements grew stronger, his mumbles grew louder; his fingers tightened and clutched the sheets. Time slowed. Her fingers brushed the ridge of his cheekbone, pressed, and turned his face toward hers.

His eyes slid open. He frowned. "Anna?"

She cringed. It was definitely her, this time. Not his dead wife -- her. And God, she hated being called that. She'd been the one to prise open his memories and give him access to the truth, but she still wanted to be Elizabeth to him, just Elizabeth and nothing and no one else. "I...yes."

"How?"

She gulped and braced herself. "What do you remember?"

He groaned. It was obvious, the amount of strain his mind was under. She gripped the cloth, marred by splotches of dark red, and watched for more blood. "Jesus, my head hurts." He tipped back his head and pressed it into the pillow. Gasped. "Oh, God." He looked at her and his eyes went wide. "I sold you." Grief strangled his words. He began to reach for her, but then a flash of horror spread over him, and his jaw slackened, and he stopped and recoiled.

"And then I fucked you." He pushed himself away. It hurt her, like hell. "I've _been_ fucking you." He brought his hand up to his mouth. "Holy shit. Holy shit!" His palm slid over and off the end of his chin, dragging down his lower lip. "I am one sick son of a bitch."

She shook her head. "No, you're not." 

"Really? I gave you away to that bastard, came to get you only 'cause there was a paycheck in it, and when I got you out, I jumped into bed with you. You tell me how that ain't sick."

She couldn't respond. Her tongue was a thick wad of cotton.

"And you know, I knew better. You were so young." He laughed. It sounded hollow. "But I went ahead and did it anyway. 'No helping how you feel, DeWitt. Ain't like you been a saint up 'till now!' Christ."

"You didn't know who I really was. Neither of us did." Why was she arguing with him? It would be easier to go along with it, wouldn't it? Let him think she agreed. "And in any case, I'm the one who started it. The blame doesn't belong all to you." 

"Coulda said no. And it never woulda happened if I kept you to begin with."

She'd seen what it had been like for him. She'd witnessed the realities of a society that neglected those on its most bottom rungs; she'd felt his grief, his guilt, his lack of hope. The part of her that should have been angry with him, and that was angry in different times and different places, instead wondered what really would have happened if he'd tried harder to hold onto her. And the rest churned with a perverse, confused sense of gratefulness, because if he'd managed to hold on, she never would have known what it was like to be in love with him.

And he thought _he_ was sick.

The air hung heavy and still. Outside in the street, there was a crash, a shout, a litany of curses. Hoof beats. The creaking of wood, the distant blare of horns. Elizabeth's scalp began to itch; the hair she'd already rinsed began to frizz and curl. The universe buzzed, and she heard the tremors of inevitably rumbling outward from their epicenter, closing the gap between the is, the was, and the would be. She touched his shoulder. His eyes were glassy.

"All the things that happened to you..." His voice cracked. "It's all my fault. Might as well have done 'em myself."

"Oh, Booker..." She wanted to tell him that it wasn't so. There was a man in him who wouldn't, who would never, and she would have been more than happy to spend the rest of her life helping him to be it. But it was bad enough that she couldn't make herself pretend to agree with him, and beyond that, what he was saying was technically true. "In the end, you freed me. You got me to Paris. You should try to remember that, even when..."

Another spasm rolled over him. "Dammit." He scrunched up his brow. "There's too much stuff going on in my head." The sheets rustled, tented over his knees, then dropped back down. He looked at her. "Me getting you out...it doesn't matter. You know that, right? A couple good deeds don't wipe out all the bad."

She paused. That was supposed to be the point. That was why he needed to die -- on the scales of their shared history, the bad weighed more heavily than the good, and whenever they seemed to be approaching balance, the calibration went and changed. Something icy snaked around her heart. "Do you really believe that?"

He huffed. "You should hate me, after everything I've done to you. Least of all for touching you."

The rumbling became a roar. Lengths of line moved together, synced, clicked into place. They were always going to have this conversation. He was always going to invite her, almost beg her, to take the next step. It had already happened. It would happen again. "For the record, I don't believe any of that. But, if you really do, then..." She lowered her head. "Do you want a way out?"

"You got a way to fix it, I'll take that." The icy thing squeezed.

"All right. Then there's something I need to show you."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! At last!
> 
> There was something I didn't know, when I posted the first two chapters of this: I was pregnant. I mention that not as an excuse, but by way of explanation. I think I probably would have finished this a hell of a lot sooner if that hadn't been the case.
> 
> Either way, I'm sorry it took so long, because, I mean, this whole thing is less than 30k, so it really shouldn't have. If you were here at the beginning and you're still here now, I thank you, sincerely.
> 
> And man, is it good to finally have it all out of my system.

**AUGUST 9th, 1913, PARIS**

She came home to a silhouette.

It was rare that she went out on her own. Every now and then, though, she found herself craving time apart from him, and set off to wander the city, indulging in the sorts of things that couldn't hold his interest. They both needed it, a fact that had baffled her at first and that she was only just starting to fully understand. Tonight, she'd seen a play, and turned heads as an un-escorted woman. Irritating, that. It was growing more irritating over time.

The light in the room was low. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over, shoulders shaking. The door clicked shut and he stiffened, looked back at her over his shoulder. There were tears on his eyelashes.

"Well, damn."

She rushed to his side. She'd been party to his nightmares, heard bits and pieces of the story of his life, but this was the first time she'd seen him cry. There had to be something wrong, something terribly, awfully wrong. She sat down next to him, leaned in; he tried to brush her off.

"Weren't supposed to see that."

She frowned. "Why not?"

"You just weren't." He started to stand. "Besides, I'm fine." 

She grabbed his arm and tugged. He could easily have shaken her off, but instead, he let her pull him back down. "Booker..." She went to caress his face, and he jerked away, and she sighed. "What are you afraid of?"

He let out a chuckle. " _Afraid?_ I'm..." The words trailed off. The moment stretched, suspended between them. Slowly, his expression changed. "It doesn't bother you, does it."

It took her a moment to get it. "Why would it?"

She didn't ask why he was crying. He didn't volunteer a reason. But he let her hold him, and she rocked him against her and felt her heart fill with something she couldn't quite define.

They fell asleep with his head in her lap, her skirts wet, her fingers buried in his hair.

\----

**EVERYWHEN, EVERYWHERE**

"Well? What are you waiting for?" His voice was lead. His eyes were a dull matte. She'd never seen him so broken, even when she'd walked the darkened corridors of his past. There was neither light nor will left within him.

"I'm just..." She had already done the work of cycling through worlds and selecting the correct one. The door was right in front of her. All she had to do was open it.

And she couldn't.

She had taken him to the split, and then to a point beyond it, dispensing with the usual illusion in favor of straightforward jumps. He knew enough already; there'd been no point in dragging it out. When he'd grasped the nature of the monster that lay dormant within him, he'd aged and grown frail right in front of her.

"I _did_ do it myself. Every last bit of it..."

Knees bending, shoulders slumping, he'd withered, dropped inches, lost his aura of strength and power. Despite the greying at his hairline, the folds around his eyes, the damage that years of hard drinking had done to his body, he'd still always looked youthful to her. But in that moment, every single one of his forty years had been drawn forth and writ plain upon his skin. He hadn't even paused when she'd asked him what he wanted to do.

But she couldn't do it, and she thought she might cry from frustration. He _longed_ for this. He desired death in a way that he never had before. It had always been passive with him. Drink to excess, piss off the wrong people, toss himself, careless, into battle. Hope he wouldn't make it out alive, sigh and try again when he did. Now, he craved an active, purposeful death, and he wanted her to give it to him. That was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? For him to embrace it?

She glanced at him. She wanted to touch his face. She wanted to cradle it, like a mother would a child's, say something that would soothe him. But the choice had been made. She'd never get to touch him again.

No, that wasn't quite true. She'd have to touch him when it came time for him to die.

"Shit." He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. Swayed, shook himself. "Where was..." He pressed his palm to the side of his head. "I'm liking this less and less," he said. "Can we just get it over with?"

On the other side of the door, she could see water lapping at her knees, wicking up into her skirts until her abdomen was cold and damp. She could see his hands taking hold of her wrists, see him placing her palms on his shoulders. He would give her a gift, in their final moments. He would make it seem as if her part in his death was incidental. It was morbidly sweet. She'd spent so long nurturing and trying to draw out the part of him that would do such a thing, and now, seeing it bubble up to the surface one last time, she wished that she could have made him understand what she saw in him. He could have been so much more.

She took a long, slow breath. It was a rotten moment. The universe was cruel. Made a girl wonder why she'd want to save it.

The weight of fate bore into her. She spread her hands, and beyond a veil of crackling grey, an embankment came into view. Booker's breathing grew shallow. Her heart pounded. Sorrow rushed into the space between her lungs.

Her fingers went taut, and then, just before she moved them, the realization struck her.

_Three lines._

She gasped. She hadn't wanted to look; she'd thought she'd already known what she'd see, and she wasn't interested in dwelling. But she couldn't bind and twirl the threads without getting a glimpse, so now she couldn't help but see his possible futures. _All_ of them.

Even the ones that shouldn't have been.

It couldn't work. If it could, then one of the other Elizabeths would surely have seen and done it. She called up the path and traced it, searching for the flaw, for the point where it branched off and crashed into disaster. At one bend, there was a pulse of potential, throbbing like a sore, but it was so embryonic that she couldn't tell what, or if, it would become. It was a hell of risk, banking on that thread remaining unspun. But allowing him to choose had been a risk, too.

She considered the tear before her, half-open, hovering between states, a static current trapped between outstretched palms. The audacity of what she was about to do excited and terrified her, so much so that she was nauseated. She could save him. She could actually save him, and more than that, she could do what he thought wasn't possible. She could make him better.

She flicked her wrists. The tear collapsed, and was replaced by another. It unfolded around them, rolled under and over, bathed them in itself. Its edges met the seams and were absorbed; shades of yellow, tan, and brown bled through and overtook the grey. The floor was littered with shells and stained with chew. There were tables and chairs, too many of them, too close together. There was a bar, long and rounded, its wood pocked and worn. Men laughed, raucously, or sang, off-key. A woman danced, kicking up a too-short skirt. The air stank of smoke and sweat and drunkenness.

Pain and confusion washed over Booker's face. "What...why are we here?"

"This is where you meet her."

His Adam's apple bobbed. "Oh God..."

She pointed toward a seat at the bar. "When she walks in, you'll be sitting there. She'll sit a few stools away from you, and you'll start talking, and..." He'd ask her what she was doing there -- wasn't the sort of place a lady ought to frequent. She'd tell him she wasn't a lady. And, in the way that only a 17-year-old could, he'd be completely taken in, awed by this rough-and-tumble girl, this girl who made it clear she had as many demons as he. He'd ask to call on her. Bed her within a week. Get her with child within two months. Marry her because it was what he was supposed to do, but also because he was head over heels for her.

It was surreal to see and to know it. She saw them together and felt revulsion and jealousy and a sick, twisted fascination. There was so much that could have been. It surprised her to realize that she hated it all, because it meant never having him in the way she wanted him.

"Elizabeth." Ah, he was figuring it out. He was smarter than he gave himself credit for.

"There's only one 'you' in this moment. What if you choose to leave before you ever speak to her?"

He stared at her, the lines around his mouth and on his forehead curving and straightening. "No," he murmured.

"I wouldn't be your daughter."

He spread his hands, palms upward. "You wouldn't be _alive._ "

She smiled sadly. "That would be the case anyway." Some versions of her killed themselves after killing him. Of the rest, the vast majority died in Rapture. She knew she wouldn't be one of the outliers. "At least this way, one of us will make it."

"What about Comstock?"

"He needs to have me. Without me, once he dies, his vision dies with him." It was still something of a trade-off. Early Columbia would still be ruthless and unjust. She told herself that the aim had always been to stop the touched worlds from burning, and that that made it okay. But she knew, in truth, that she was only looking for a way to justify. Even in the midst of self-sacrifice, she was weak.

There was a long pause. Threads gathered at the point where they stood, drawn into an interlace that curved upward, forming a dome, which would become a bubble, which would burst open and give birth to a new world. Booker's eyes twitched. He wouldn't know what it was, but he could feel it, she could tell. His mind was too fractured for him not to.

"Don't make me do this." His voice quavered.

"Think of what your life could be like, Booker." Hers did, too. "Imagine if you had a few years without grief. If you had time to deal with what happened at Wounded Knee. If you didn't have a child and lose your wife at 18." 

"I do what you're telling me, I'll lose her anyway. And...you..."

A rush of energy would spread outward from the new reality, rolling over the old contradictory ones, absorbing them. Washing them away. "You won't remember us." She almost choked on the words.

"Jesus, you think that makes it better?"

She nodded. "Yes, I do. That whole part of your life, all of that pain... It'll just be gone." She glanced ahead and saw him, late 20s, cheeks full and eyes bright, laughing and refusing the offer of a second drink. He had mourned. He had not found forgiveness; not fully, not yet. He might never. But he actually _had_ learned to live with it, enough to allow himself to feel okay. "You'll have a chance to be happy."

He snorted. His eyes were wet and red. "How can you want this?"

"I don't. I..." A part of her did. It would make so very many things so much easier. She grasped her thimble with the thumb and forefinger of her opposite hand, twisted. While immersed in the center, she had almost given in to the urge to let go -- better to lose herself than to face losing him. That still held true. And she couldn't stand the thought of creating a world that didn't have him in it, even if it might have been a better one. This was close and good enough. "God, I love you so much." Enough to die. Enough to never live at all. "I want to give this to you. Please, let me."

A shudder ran through him, and he bled, and didn't bother to wipe it away. Her arms, fingers, neck -- everything tingled. Her flesh was inflamed. The pregnant budding that danced about in the space between them pulsed, grew bright and hot. In moments, they would pass the point of no return. He took a step toward her.

"You're not gonna take me outta here, are you? Even if I ask you to."

She shook her head. Another pause. He was searching for words.

"I don't wanna do this."

"I know."

"Rather it was me doing the dying."

"I know." She was so, so selfish. She gestured ahead of her. "She'll be here soon. You have to be there to make the choice."

He lifted his hand. She held her breath, waiting, hoping he'd touch her. He didn't. Instead, he sighed, and his arm dropped back to his side. "Fine."

Her heart seized. He walked away from her, pushed a chair from his path, slid up to the bar and leaned over it. Tendrils of ether formed eddies in his wake. As everything shifted, the room became a set of transparent tapestries that, one by one, began to unravel. The door to the bar opened.

She closed her eyes, turned, and wrapped her arms about her middle. It was over. It was really, truly over. Soon, she'd drift away, and a much younger Booker would find himself nursing a vague impression, like a lingering image left over from a dream. He might wonder and try to hold onto it. Fail. Then, there'd be nothing left of her, save perhaps a distant echo, a flash that would come to him in half-conscious moments before dimming and fading.

She almost regretted having to take her mother from him. Almost.

She was engulfed in static. The hairs on her arms stood up. What would it feel like? Surely it wouldn't hurt, the way properly dying would. Surely it would be gentle, to be undone. She wanted to be held. She wanted his arms and his voice, his hand on the back of her head, his lips on her temple. Even if it was painless, she didn't want to die alone. She'd spent far too much of her life that way.

A hand closed around her upper arm.

_...what?_

She was spun forcefully around. She gasped and instinctively pulled back, but the grip was firm. Her eyes opened and she took in Booker, his expression intense and manic.

"What is this?" she asked.

"I can't do it," he said. "I ain't gonna."

Warmth seeped into her belly but she shut it down, shook her head. "No. No, you have to."

"Who says?"

"I do." The bend. The possible offshoot. It couldn't happen. "You do this, or you die. Those are the only options." She wasn't a god.

"I won't let you die."

She pursed her lips. "Well, I won't let _you_ die."

"Seems to me we got a problem, then."

The universe groaned around her. Particles hovered in superposition, waiting for her to cast her gaze upon them. She could force him. "Booker..."

He grabbed her face. He was her father, but he had been her lover too long for her body not to respond. "You care so much about me being happy? Well, I was damn near to being it when we..." He closed his eyes, opened them again. "Look, I don't know much about how any of this works, but if we really can't choose, why do we get to? Why _can't_ there be another way?"

There was a faint tremor in his voice, and a desperate, half-mad hope stirred within her. She lifted her hands, moved to cup his face as he had hers, withdrew, moved in again. He breathed. His crow's feet bunched together.

"Because there isn't." The bend bulged. The world would drown, wouldn't it? All of the worlds would drown. "You saw."

"Maybe we just need to look a little harder."

"I spent..." How long had it been? "I spent years looking, and I couldn't find anything."

"Then why'd you give me an out? What were you planning to do if I took it?" He rubbed her cheekbone, then her cheek. "There's gotta be something."

"Something" was a gamble. The variables were ever-shifting, and her play was a single uncertainty within a sea of them. She'd been fine with taking that chance for his sake, but this was different; it felt a whole lot worse to take it when part of the point was to save herself. Her heart swelled with the possibility of getting to keep him, in whatever form that might take, and ached at the thought of what keeping him would entail. If she had any sense, she'd wrest back control, bend him, and let him go.

She traced the edge of his jaw. Dragged her fingers through his hair, starting at his temple, arching over and around and behind his ear. She watched as conflict blossomed within him, the memory of what they'd been and the pull of the physical habits they'd formed butting up against the knowledge of who they were, of what he'd done. As it was for her, so it was for him: it had been too long. And they'd only known one another as comrades and bed-mates. How could they ever reconcile that, if they went back? How could he ever get past his guilt?

"I don't know if it would work." By the change in his expression, she could tell he'd caught the subtext. "What if it doesn't?" What if the world still burned? What if they still burned for each other?

He gritted his teeth. "Then to hell with all of it."

Her knees nearly buckled. She wanted to kiss him, hated that she couldn't, slipped her arm around his neck and pulled him close instead. He was a stupid, terrible, ridiculous, beautiful man.

And they didn't have to do a goddamned thing they didn't want to do. 

He clung to her and trembled, and reality trembled with him. Strings shed motes of light, worlds shattered and were given form. The dangerous potential, the choice that shouldn't be, erupted from its point on the line, matter drawing together like wool on a spindle, the origin spitting sparks and igniting clusters of new threads and new worlds. Over the curve of his shoulder, she could see that many, perhaps most, still led to disaster. But there were some, there were _enough,_ that shone with hope.

Maybe she was more godlike than she'd thought.

The bar faded. She brought him home. When he started to bleed and grow dizzy, she did, too, and for some reason, she took it as a good sign.

\----

**JULY 27th, 1914, BOSTON**

"You sure you wanna do this?"

They stood on the steps of the court house, Somerset Street at their backs. It was cooler than it had been over the weekend, but Elizabeth's skin still prickled with sweat.

"I..." She didn't want to say that she had to. There had been too much of that of late. "Yeah. I do."

He sighed, pushed his hands into his pockets. Glanced up at the building, then back at her. It was strange, being there for something other than work. Strange and frightening. "All right." His weight shifted and he brought up his elbow, his hand forming a loose fist at his midsection. She blinked and stared.

He was holding out his arm for her.

"Well?" he asked.

She took a breath. Something was changing in him. Had been since they'd made their choice. A part of her was worried -- his mind was damaged, and although knitting his memories back together had wiped out the futures that had him hemorrhaging to death, he was still in danger of suffering a mental break. But if she could just...encourage him, push him in the right direction...

She lowered her head and smiled. _There I go again._ She wrapped her fingers around his forearm and let him lead her on. 

They entered the court house and moved down the hall. They'd spent days discussing this, and he didn't like it, but she'd insisted. If they didn't flee, then she'd be found. If she wasn't found, then the US would go to war with Columbia. She had to take responsibility for what she'd done, even if it meant peddling a half-truth. It was the half-truth that made him uncomfortable.

"How can I make it up to you if we're gonna go and pretend..."

He'd sacrifice the entire universe for her. "You've already made it up to me, Booker."

It was going to take a while to convince him. It was more than worth it to invest the time.

The man in the United States Marshal's office was polished and severe. His hair was slicked back; his suit was pressed; his upper lip was obscured by a mustache, wide, in the fashion of the day. When they entered, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands over his belly.

"Afternoon." His eyes roved up, down, taking them in. "Something I can help you with?"

"Yes. Um..." She swallowed. Her gut churned with nervous energy. "I'm the daughter of..." She glanced at Booker, and the corner of his lips twitched upward, and he gave her a nod. Giving her permission. Giving her away, again -- this time, because she wanted him to, because she needed the illusion of separation. A landscape of new possibilities slid into view. Off in the distance, he kissed her. She wrapped herself around him, and they lay shrouded in afterglow, laughing, their bodies locked together, their fingers intertwined. _To hell with all of it._ Her confidence grew. Something dripped from her nose, and she reached up to wipe it away. "My father was Zachary Hale Comstock, and I have information for you."

He pressed his palm into hers and squeezed.


End file.
